Take me, for instance. Koyomi Araragi.

The truth is, even now, I can’t truly say that those two weeks of hell are entirely over. Of course─even without bringing up my own unusual circumstances, there is something unreal about a word like “end” in the first place.

Even if justice eradicates evil…

A new evil will simply be born.

Evil may be eradicated, but it cannot be exterminated─in fact, it is quite possible for the new evil that arises to have started out on the side of justice.

But eventually she’d learn. Even if I never told her. It’s nothing difficult.

Everything is an opening act, to everything.

The revolutionary can’t become a settler.

Backs are turned without fanfare, promises are broken without scruple, debts are left totally unpaid, and the weak are hardly protected.

Those are the rules.

However loudly my two sisters, my pride and joy, proclaim justice, the concept of justice is rooted in fighting evil, in being hostile to evil, so it’s inevitable.

Evil, too, has its reasons. Evil, too, has family.

Faced with this reality, few could persist in their righteousness without a shadow of doubt─and you’d be hard pressed to call those few just.

It isn’t a dualism, nor is this humanism.

When we start down that path, we never get started and never get finished.

We languish─and that’s how it goes.

Of course, this isn’t all bad─everything I’ve said hints, too, at the possibility that what exists as evil can likewise turn into justice. There is still room for penance, and for change.

It can come from anywhere. We could put it this way: It is because nothing ends that salvation exists.

This placeholder might seem little more than hypocrisy, but I don’t see the harm in it. In fact, we might say that it is a clear and present representation of this final tale, replete with fakeness.

Let’s not speak, then, of justice and evil or of good and hypocrisy.

Of endings and beginnings.

Of living and dying.

Why put on airs?

We have no thesis. We won’t discuss noble themes.

The story I am about to tell is simply that of my sister.

Tsukihi Araragi. One half of the Fire Sisters.

My younger younger sister, my littler little sister.

And also, immortal.

The tale of a mere fake.

Karen Araragi.

My little sister, who’s in her last year of middle school, said this suddenly, with absolutely no preface, while doing a handstand.

A handstand. Which was actually typical of her.

Beneath the brilliant, glittering sun, perched above the asphalt, my sister, believe it or not, was upside down. In a way, it was even more embarrassing than if she had gone streaking.

“Huh? What are you blabbering on about? A sure way to win at rock-paper-scissors? You expect me to believe that? I mean, there isn’t any. That’s about as ridiculous as you.”

I sure wouldn’t have minded landing one, though. It sounded like a great way of repaying her for her daily antics.

By the way, Karen’s hair was styled in her usual, old-school ponytail, but when she did a handstand, her long hair wound up touching the ground and dragging along, so she wrapped it around her neck like a scarf while she was upside down.

A woman on fire─she even liked to call herself “a human fireball.” The first character in her name meant fire, but I almost wanted to scrunch it together with the second to yield the one for phosphorus.

“Heheh. But there is a way. As surely as I exist.”

Karen Araragi, the woman in the jersey. I forgot to mention that she’s also quite tall.

Heck, I haven’t even shared this with Tsukihi, she added with a cheeky grin.

Her legs never stopped moving. She was marching backward at a brisk pace.

She wasn’t the Fire Sisters’ “enforcer” for nothing─without even recalling the whole bee commotion from the other day.

Compared to her ongoing training, walking backwards was almost normal.

It’s just that being seen with her tends to get very embarrassing. Generally speaking, though, that means everything.

“Oh, but you might. Even morning, day, and night. Don’t reject possibilities, okay? Imagine the advantages of being great at rock-paper-scissors. For instance, Russian roulette. What if an argument over who goes first comes down to a game of rock-paper-scissors?”

“The probability would still be the same.”

More to the point, when was I ever going to be forced to play Russian roulette? Once things came to that, I was most likely well on my way to kicking the bucket, no?

“Huh? The probability is the same? Are you sure? Isn’t the person pulling the trigger first at a disadvantage?”

“Huh? What? Help me out here.”

“You see─”

“What does ‘heightens’ mean?”

“That’s what you don’t understand?!”

Was a simple word like “heightens” not part of her vocabulary? How did she ever manage to survive for fifteen years?!

And your backstory is that you have good grades!

“You’re thinking of Hiten!” I hollered like a straight man, although to be honest I wasn’t sure if it was a demon. I considered myself a utility player when it came to fielding a joke, but I was rusty about some shows.

“Wait, the Dutch scientist who studied Saturn’s rings and wrote a pioneering treatise on probability, Christian…”

“Hrrm, then who could it be… I feel like I’ve come across it somewhere.” Her arms folded, Karen got sidetracked into recalling some random name─search as she might, she was lost now.

“It’s not about knowing, it’s about feeling. When it comes down to it, what you know or don’t know doesn’t matter, it’s what you can do, and do do…”

“Well, true…”

Just look at Hanekawa. She’s certainly a treasure trove of knowledge─but what’s so amazing about her, so exhilarating, is how she applies it.

No wonder there are all kinds of crazy rumors about Hanekawa, like that she took the ancient Chinese imperial exams while in middle school, or that she passed the German A-levels over summer vacation as a high school freshman (I spread those rumors, by the way).

“You’ve played Russian roulette?!”

It wasn’t a hypothetical!

Seriously, it wasn’t a hypothetical?!

If it was true, and she survived, that meant her opponent blew his brains out!

Officer, we have a criminal case! A case involving my little sister!

“I guess it’s fine, then… Wait, no, that’s so not fine.”

You Fire Sisters… I knew they got up to some insane stuff, but not that they’d been in a conflict where firearms made a showing…

Did I need to go to the cops for real?

“That Italian Mafioso was a pretty tough cookie, though.”

“What was an Italian Mafioso doing in our little country town?!”

“Sightseeing!”

“You know how delinquents go on a school trip and get into a big fight with the local high school thugs in some manga? It was that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?!”

If all this was true, it went well beyond playing at defenders of justice.

“It got pretty exciting toward the end! A real party─that’s how it got to Russian roulette. Ahaha, a Japanese girl playing Russian roulette with the Italian Mafia. That’s so globalist, you forget who’s from where.”

It was odd to be speaking of Russian roulette like it was baseball, but anyway, for the last one to fall to her opponent, she had to have been the first to place the gun to her head… But didn’t that mean she’d lost at rock-paper-scissors when they were deciding the order?

“Koyomi, you idiot!”

Karen hit me. Across the face, for no good reason.

When it came to violence, my sister never hesitated. She studied at a dojo geared toward actual combat, and her skills were beyond first-rate, but when it came to mental composure she was a rank amateur.

Sadly.

“If that’s how you feel, when does your method ever come into play?!”

What a pinhead. She’d forgotten what she’d told me only a minute ago.

Well, once we started talking about Russian roulette, the rest was probably all nonsense. The whole premise was bankrupt.

“Uh, wasn’t that the line of an incredible villain?”

An incredibly funny one, too. What Jagi lacked in strength, he made up for in impact relative to his fictional brothers.

Such a contrast with Raditz.

As unbelievable as it sounds, apparently some people out there are capable of such extraordinary feats. I heard it from Hanekawa, so it’s probably true.

Huh, so maybe if it was right after feeding Shinobu my blood, I could pull it off too?

“Tsk tsk tsk. What sort of sure way is that? If you got your eyes poked, it’d be useless.”

“A real martial artist is prepared for all contingencies. I aim to be as omnidirectional as possible.”

Your opponent could just lie. Anyone willing to go after your eyes would hardly flinch at the idea of telling a lie.

“What’s essential is invisible to the eye, Koyomi.”

“Haw! Seriously though, the sure way I’ve come up with works even if your opponent tries to lie. Heheh, I should win the Nobel Prize for this!”

“Really? Because I can’t think of anything stupider than believing that every clever idea qualifies for a Nobel Prize.”

Combining the three into a single hand gesture─with the middle and index fingers opened to make scissors, the thumb lifted to make paper, and the last two fingers clenched in rock…

“A pistol? Oh, right. It looks like a gun. Huh. But my method even works against people who claim victory that way… Let’s see, if not the Nobel Prize, then I deserve, uh, uh, the Pulitzer for this…”

“……”

Did my sisters feel the same way when I turned into a slacker after starting high school?

Talk about sad. It made me want to go easier on them.

“All right, all right, lay it on me,” I said. “Your sweet big brother Koyomi is ready to listen, Karen-chan.”

Until I let her tell me her method, our conversation, though maybe not our legs, would stand still. It was like some flag you had to trigger to proceed in a game. Like a YES/NO question that keeps popping back up until you finally choose YES.

I doubted it was a quest line that I needed to clear to beat the game, though…

“No thanks, that sounds like too much trouble.”

“Come on, otherwise you might try to be a sore loser and say you lost on purpose or something.”

“Losing on purpose at rock-paper-scissors would be as impressive as a sure way to win…”

“All right, Koyomi, how about something physical? A dare. Whoever loses has to piggyback the winner.”

“Piggyback…”

“Yeah, all the way to where we’re going.”

“……”

What’s that you say? Even if there’s no sure way to win, I might still lose normally?

That would be that.

All I had to do was not honor my end of the bargain (grin).

What guy in his right mind would parade around his own neighborhood with his taller (and maybe also heavier) sister on his back?

“Fine, then,” I said. “I agree to your terms.”

“Hm? You accepted awfully quick.”

“Nah, I’m not plotting anything. Trust your big brother. He’s the type of man who never goes back on his word, yeah?”

Promises with my smarter little sister, Tsukihi, were another matter, but having broken thousands of them with Karen by now, your guess is as good as mine as to where her trust came from.

I was starting to worry if she was seriously stupid.

“All right,” I said. “Rock─”

“Stage one… Sounds pretty overblown for just a game of rock-paper-scissors. How many are there?”

“Two.”

“La-a-me!”

Just two.

Maybe you needed to mind your step, but they weren’t actual stages.

“Okay, let’s do this.” Karen drew back one arm. “Rock…”

Then she yelled─

“Paper!”

And stuck her hand out in rock shape.

“……”

Obviously, I hadn’t made my move─or rather, never had the chance.

Karen stood there with her hand in a fist against thin air.

Whereupon I punched my sister in the face. How’s that for rock?

It was no love tap either, but a demonic iron fist.

“Bullshit,” I scolded. “Who in the world is going to recognize such a win? If you pull that with the Italian Mafia, they’ll shoot you dead on the spot.”

“Nrgh, but it seemed like a pretty good idea when I thought of it just now.”

“You just thought of it!”

Still, she’d given it hardly enough thought. It was too simplistic.

Couldn’t she see that I’d get mad?

“Karen, you lose for breaking the rules. A piggyback ride isn’t going to cut it. As punishment, you have to carry me on your shoulders.”

“Ack. I guess,” Karen readily accepted my harsher punishment.

“All right, Koyomi. Get on my shoulders.”

She crouched down for real─and I started to think that maybe I was the one being punished here. Was I about to travel around my own neighborhood, my own territory, on my sister’s shoulders?

“Hrrm, you know…maybe we should just forget about this, Karen. With all the studying I’ve been doing I’ve put on some weight lately.”

“How much do you weigh?”

“About…125 pounds.”

“That’s nothing. Anything less than four hundred pounds is light as a feather to me.”

“You live on the Moon or what?”

“Hm? Ah, my ponytail. Maybe you’re right.”

“Don’t you think?”

“Yeah, you have a point. Like always, my big brother knows best.”

She stood up immediately as if she’d given up─perhaps trying to persuade her hadn’t been a waste of time, but I also knew better than anyone that Karen wasn’t the type of girl to listen once she got an idea into her head.

The key? Why would she pull it out now?

“Hm? Koyomi, haven’t you ever used the teeth on a key to cut through packing tape and clothes tags?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess I’ve done that before.”

Scissors, like─

“Hup.”

It was already too late.

With the key in her hand, Karen stretched her arm behind her, placed the teeth against the base of her ponytail, and snagged them back and forth like a saw to hack through her hair.

As casually as you or I might peel a banana.

In contrast to her casual air, the noise was hideous and grating.

“Hum hum… Ah, and there’s a garbage can right there.” Whoa, I feel lighter, she remarked in between her humming as she half-walked, half-skipped over to the bin, into which she lobbed her severed and curled-up ponytail.

Like it had been nothing, she returned the key to her pocket.

“All right,” she told me, “now you can get on my shoulders!”

“That was badass!”

She ditched her trademark hairstyle since grade school just to carry me around on her shoulders─in other words, just because she’d cheated at rock-paper-scissors. Or to put it even more starkly, just because she’d lost at rock-paper-scissors!

“Hrm? Ah, who cares. I’ll just swing by my usual hairdresser tomorrow. Well, come to think of it, they might be closed for the Obon holidays.”

“If they saw what their customer did to her hair, they might close down for good!”

Karen’s head looked like a retired sumo wrestler’s…

“You’ve had that ponytail since grade school! I thought that was your thing?!”

“I don’t know, it was long and a pain to take care of. It got in the way whenever I was trying to sleep and I always had bedhead when I woke up. Honestly I’ve been sick of it.”

“But you kept it anyways?!”

“Still, don’t just throw your hair in the bin! The collector might think that something terrible happened! ‘A woman’s hair is her life,’ haven’t you heard?!”

“Hrm? Nope.”

“You dunderhead!”

Such unfathomable stupidity! Was she the kind of moron who’d write “Merry XXX” on her Christmas cards and actually send them out?!

“A woman’s hair is her life? Hmph, that’s a fine saying. But words can’t quite measure up to life. And I dare to throw mine in the gutter. I strive to shine like a beautiful gem even in the gutter, like my master exhorts me to.”

“So it’s this master’s fault you turned out this way?!”

“Ack, there’s no going back… What now? I wonder what Tsukihi will say.”

“Don’t blame it on me! She’ll kill me!”

Well, either way, Karen’s hair wasn’t going to grow back by talking about it (or rather, I didn’t want to anymore).

“Okay, Koyomi, time to get on my shoulders. Chicken walk, chicken walk ♪”

“Huh? Wait, are you getting on sitting up?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just, don’t people usually get on sideways?”

“Only in a judo throw!”

As we continued to banter, I straddled my sister’s shoulders.

Straddled.

……

Ooh…such a feeling of conquest.

The position really was like mounting. Not in the sense of getting on a horse, but as in what dogs did.

I was overcome with an odd sense of superiority.

The moment, however, was fleeting.

“Okay, upsie-daisy!”

With that, Karen rose with my 125-pound frame on her shoulders as easily as if she were carrying nothing at all.

My vantage point was about equal to Karen’s height, minus her head, plus my sitting height. Heck, even without doing the math, it was easily more than seven feet off the ground… Wow, some basketball players in America walked around like this every day?

All that remained was the sheer terror of my vantage point.

“I’m sorry, please let me down! Uncle, uncle!”

Forget any sense of superiority, I was feeling like a loser now. I might actually grovel once she let me down. I’d do a handstand if that’s what she wanted.

“What is it?”

“Your crotch grinding into the back of my head feels gross.”

“……”

Right, I knew we shouldn’t be doing this at our age. It was a weird thing─

“Hey, I’ve got an idea,” Karen suggested. “Since I cut off my ponytail, it’s only fair if you cut off your thing.”

This was all so frightening! The height, her inspiration! She deserved the Bram Stoker Award!

Besides, she decided to cut off her ponytail on her own, so how was that fair? Don’t make it sound like it was merely my responsibility!

“Your hair might grow back, but if I cut off my thing, it’s all over for me! In all kinds of ways.”

Pain was still pain! Just thinking about it hurt!

“I see. Anyway, Koyomi, I can handle your weight but don’t keep swaying like that or we’ll lose our balance.”

“Easy for you to say. I’m not you. How the heck am I supposed to balance myself stuck here like a giraffe?”

“Fine,” Karen conceded. “It will probably be a bit of a strain, but lean your upper body against my neck and head and shift the center of gravity forward. And then tuck your dangling legs under my armpits. That way I can hold you in place like the safety bar at an amusement park.”

“Like this?”

Like when they disable you by bending back just one thumb.

Or wait…that was aikido, wasn’t it?

Either way, I’d yet to see Karen perform one normal, straightforward karate move.

What was up with her Shocker dojo?

“Uh, I’m not sure I am. In fact, it’s even less good? How much less good for me is this gonna get? I can’t even move my fingertips. And I’m starting to feel pins and needles. Boss-lady, are you sure you’re not cutting off my circulation?”

“Hmm… Usually, it’d be the guy carrying the girl.”

It wasn’t supposed to be a weird affair, but rather, cheerful and jaunty.

“Okay, Koyomi, let’s get going. Tee-hee.”

No, with each step she seemed to gain steam. You couldn’t blame her. Considering our destination that summer vacation morning─you definitely couldn’t blame Karen.

You might even say that we didn’t get along. That there was hostility.

Man, that Kaiki was so useless. In being a bother and nothing else, no other grownup came close.

Which was why we tiptoed around each other when we spoke.

The fact that all the tiptoeing wound up with Karen cutting off her ponytail and me on her shoulders proved what a nuisance it was to be siblings.

So why today, Monday, August fourteenth? Why were Karen and I spending time together this day?

Begin flashback.

Earlier that morning.

“Koyomi? Is there something you’d like me to do for you?”

For everyone else, mid-August is the Obon holiday season, but sadly, as an exam taker, that passed me by, too. Actually, in the first place, our family doesn’t pay much attention to old native customs.

Oshino would be furious if he knew.

Well, getting scolded by Hanekawa only put a spring in my step, so she could go right ahead. I wish she’d get pissed off, her shoulders shaking, and her breasts, naturally, shaking as well.

Okay.

I’d woken up early once again and was working on my usual morning drills before breakfast when Karen suddenly (and without knocking) threw open the door and burst into my room.

Karen Araragi.

The perpetually jersey-clad middle schooler.

“Not a thing…” I replied.

That was Karen’s standard interaction with doors.

In her cultural milieu, they were always opened with the back of one’s foot, whether it was a sliding Japanese one or a hinged Western one─

No… If it were a cultural thing, then Tsukihi and I, raised in the same milieu, would behave in the same manner, so scratch that.

Snap.

The No. 2 pencil in my right hand broke in half. My writing implement, pentagonal in shape to bring luck to the exam taker─what an ill omen.

Sure, she could measure as many feet and inches as she liked. That, in itself, was no skin off my back─the problem here was the lamentable fact that she was consequentially taller than me.

In other words, having installed karate techniques on the hardware she’d been blessed with, namely her body, she possessed the fighting capabilities to easily take on some wild animals.

It was insane, a bonus round in an old-school fighting game.

“Come on, Koyomi, I want to help. Believe it or not, your sister is someone you can rely on. I’m your faithful little sister, you know? Your devoted little sister? Anything you want, just say the word and I’ll do it. I am at your service, o-kay?”

If anything, she could leave me be. I was busy memorizing vocabulary at the moment. With that implicit message, I brushed her arms from around my neck.

A bout against a legendary vampire. Mortal feline combat. The crab, the snail, the monkey, and the snake. And the bee.

That aside, having my sister hanging all over me doesn’t float my boat.

I was simply creeped out.

“Can’t you see I’m trying to focus on my studies? I haven’t the time to mess around with a lower life form, you amoeba. If you’re bored why don’t you go for a run? Feel free to never come…back…”

But if I must─

If I must, for the honor of the primate order, somehow put into words the uncanny sight─

“Let’s see…”

Karen Araragi, my sister, was wearing a skirt.

……

So what, you might argue.

To convey if only a fifth of my shock, I might have put that in italics, like so: My sister was wearing a skirt.

Like I said earlier, Karen always wore a jersey. To rephrase, she wore nothing else. Jerseys were her combat fatigues, or like the robes of a saint. Yet she had doffed the cloth and donned a skirt.

Her all-too-long legs were receiving undue emphasis.

She wasn’t wearing a sports top or a windbreaker. Not even a running dress.

Instead, she was attired in an entirely unsportsmanlike stole and sleeveless turtleneck.

Such long arms! So slender a neck!

And, and…

Who was this pretty girl?!

Well.

She was a middle school girl, after all.

It wasn’t completely unheard of for her to wear the school-designated skirt and blouse (as for the likelihood, imagine glancing up at the sky and happening to spot a cascade of shooting stars, and you wouldn’t be far off), but that was just her uniform.

Yet her current outfit looked bare to a degree that was unthinkable for school clothes.

It flaunted the edicts of nature.

She could…wear something other than a jersey?!

That was like Kiryl equipping the Zenithian Armor!

Still, Karen and Tsukihi possessed very different body types.

The turtleneck showed off Karen’s contours as clearly as a form-fitting T-shirt, while the creased skirt, probably not designed to be very long in the first place, transformed into an extreme miniskirt.

Terror.

A host of traumatic incidents came back to me. This and that and…

Hey, all of it happened in the past few months!

Seriously, how many brushes with death have I had in that time?!

But forget about my trauma… Right now, we’re talking about Karen.

“Nah, I’m not being bullied,” Karen denied after I leapt irate from my swivel chair and grabbed and shook her by the shoulders, which she, with a tired look, let me do. “If anyone is bullying me, honestly, it’s you.”

“Urk.”

“Urrk.”

Deep.

Why was she confessing this to me now? Did I really say anything that mean?

“It’s what inspired me to become a defender of justice─so you see, my hatred of evil actually stems from you.”

Everything went black, and I cradled my head.

My conscience lashed at me like waves upon the shore. If I didn’t get ahold of myself, I might go on some rampage. The only thing keeping me sane was my anger.

Anger at myself, and also against the world.

“Sometimes you’re hotter than fire, big brother.”

I’m crushing on you, Karen added with a smile.

It was a gentle smile.

Hmm. Judging from her reaction, I seemed to be on the wrong track.

Unless there was some possibility that I was missing?

Hrrm. Mr. Holmes’ articulation of the process of elimination was kinda loose.

“Ahh, I got it! Cosplay!”

“Oh, yeah? So you were pretty delicate once upon a time,” I remarked as if it had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t showing an ounce of remorse, if I do say so myself. “Well, if you’re not being bullied and it’s not cosplay, what the hell?”

With a husky moan, Karen struck an enticing pose with all the muscles in her body.

It was far from sexy. If anything, it was a superb martial arts stance. I guess that wasn’t surprising since she’d rotated her hips while standing straight.

“I-I don’t know about cute,” I stuttered.

“Cute is the word,” warned Karen, still in her enticing pose.

By the way, while I’d rather not divulge a fact that touches on my dignity as an older brother, my sister is genuinely terrifying when she tries to intimidate me for real. According to legend, once, she even beat a lion at a staring contest at the zoo.

N-No, I wasn’t sucking up to my little sister on account of some unstated threat! (Ex)cuse us, is what I meant to say!

I just misspoke, like Hachikuji!

Sorry, a slip of the tongue!

“……”

Karen continued to intimidate me in the same pose. She was seriously scaring me.

My body began trembling uncontrollably.

“Cute! Cute! Cuuute,” I found myself repeating.

Clearly, I was just misspeaking serially here, and what I meant was, Cut! Cut! Cut (your crap). I’m sure Hachikuji’s tongue would have slipped more elegantly, but I’m no Hachikuji. True, an elegant slip of the tongue is an odd metaphor.

We both fell silent. The awkwardness was palpable. Several seconds passed…

“Eheheh!”

…and, believe it or not, Karen hugged me.

A middle-school girl hugging you might sound adorable, but the facts on the ground belied that image.

That image is fake.

Karen’s movements were analogous.

Swift and nimble. From her first step, she was already at top speed.

In traffic accidents and such, when humans are in imminent danger, we often mistakenly stiffen up. Well, even if I hadn’t frozen, Karen’s attacks were impossible to dodge─maybe during spring break, but not this summer vacation, not me.

About a year ago, I’d witnessed her crashing through a steel girder at school with the same maneuver. It was already pretty deteriorated, but still─the scene flashed before my eyes.

Fortunately for me, I did not share in that steel girder’s fate. The impact, however, was enough to knock the wind out of my guts.

Karen, who had wrapped her arms around my back with no apparent concern for my lungs, now proceeded to slide them up around my neck and to pull herself close.

Total coverage. As in around-the-clock? No, twenty-four hours of this would be a little much. Actually, even one minute!

If this wasn’t horror, then what was?

“K-Karen?”

“Thank you! I’m so happy to hear my brother say that! So happy! Yay!” Still hugging me, squeezing even tighter, Karen let out a jubilant cry.

Yet another helping of horror…

“………nkk!”

We had a serious situation here.

My sister…was being affectionate.

Well, maybe not a serious situation, but certainly an unfunny one. Honestly, she’d been weird from the beginning. Asking me if there was anything she could do for me, even if it was just to pass the time, was unlike Karen.

“Ahh, it’s so relaxing hugging my big brother like this. It must be because you’re so accepting. I bet this is what a Tempur-Pedic pillow feels like.”

She really wasn’t being bullied? Then was it some kind of dare? In which case, I was the one getting mistreated here. What did I do to deserve to be picked on by a bunch of middle schoolers?

“My cute little sister…”

“You just said I’m cute. Real men don’t go back on their word.”

“I haven’t got any for you right now!”

Well, sure.

Maybe it was just the novelty of it, but she actually didn’t look half bad in a skirt.

“Huh? Sure, I just thought…I’d turn over a new leaf and start pitching myself as the little sister who loves her brother and never disobeys him.”

“Pitch all you want, I’m not buying it! Besides, you’re stepping on Kanbaru’s turf!”

Obviously she wasn’t my little sister, but as my junior her position was similar.

The sense of freedom reminded me of being un-cuffed (something that actually happened to me late last month, the simile is based on experience)─and Karen took three steps back to put some space between us.

As though to avoid stepping on her master’s shadow, as the saying goes.

Hm.

What now? Karen had a weird look on her face.

As glad as I was to be free, she was acting very quiet all of a sudden. Maybe I’d surprised her by suddenly mentioning an unfamiliar name in the way of quipping.

I figured this was my chance to change the topic, and if I was lucky, maybe Karen wearing a skirt could be consigned to the dustbin of history, so I proceeded to try to explain who Kanbaru was, but that was easier said than done.

My junior Kanbaru. A second-year student at Naoetsu High School, and a former ace basketball player.

It was almost like trying to explain how a centipede walks. Or like being asked how falling in love works.

If I just shared my plain, unadorned thoughts on her, it’d sound like I was badmouthing her. Her reputation would suffer, and I didn’t want that at all.

“Let’s see… Kanbaru is like an E5 series bullet train, one of those maglevs…or maybe a fighter jet…like the Phantom?”

As I babbled searching for the right analogy, Karen interrupted─ and surprised me.

“Of course, Suruga Kanbaru.”

Huh?

Wait, what? I’m pretty sure I hadn’t said her full name yet.

“Karen?”

Suddenly raising her voice had made the end come off sounding babyish. The speed with which she followed up, however, cancelled out the trivial error.

Too fast for the eye to see, it was like a flash step. Or a full-body Futae no Kiwami double limit break.

Put simply, she prostrated herself in a dogeza.

Put simply or not, in fact.

“………”

Ah. Right.

So that’s what it was.

Karen’s suspicious, totally uncharacteristic behavior, so suspicious that I might have called the police, the hospital, or maybe even a prison hospital if she weren’t family, finally made sense.

Kanbaru was so talented that she led our sports-poor prep school’s feeble basketball team all the way to the national finals. To say the least, how many girls could pull off a slam dunk?

Quite a few of her admirers were fanatical.

First Senjogahara’s fan, Kanbaru, tried to kill me, and then Kanbaru’s fans made their move. I sure had some luck. Maybe next time Kanbaru’s fans’ fans would try to kill me.

In any case, I was aware that her popularity, her power of attraction, exceeded the confines of Naoetsu High. Still, middle schoolers knew about her, too?

She really was something else.

“Well, come to think of it,” I said, “since martial arts are a sport nowadays, you knowing about a national-level player who’s a local star isn’t weird at all.”

Maybe she felt close to Kanbaru in some way.

Still, did my worthless sister just say “sensei”?

I didn’t know about that.

“Please, Koyomi─oopsy, my dear big brother!!”

“‘Oopsy’…”

“Daisy!”

“Great timing─but!”

Yes, I’m the kind of older brother who grinds his younger sister’s head beneath his foot as she lies prostrate.

Consider it payback for her scaring me earlier (not that I was scared!).

“Ahh, it’s an honor to be stepped on by you, big brother,” Karen dared to say, resilient, face down and unresisting.

Hmph. If I do say so about my own sister, she was M cool.

It was strong-arm blackmail.

Even if I was stepping on her head.

“Of course!” my sister agreed. “Then I’ll lick your foot! Starting from the big toe and in descending order!”

“Nrkk!”

Karen lifted her face slightly from her position on the floor to look up at me. A fire seemed to smolder in her eyes as if to welcome any obstacle standing in her way. It was quite a wonderful expression.

“Fine then!” she cried. “What about my virginity? You can take my virginity!”

“I don’t want my little sister’s virginity!”

Reality admits of certain situations where violence against your little sister, still in middle school, is warranted.

“Ghak!”

Dealt such a blow, you couldn’t maintain a dogeza even if you were Karen. Yet if you were Karen, you instantly leapt backward on your knees to diffuse the impact.

10.00! 10.00! 10.00! 10.00! 10.00!

What an incredible athlete.

She landed on my bed. The springs creaked, loudly.

I’d be sleeping a little less comfortably from now on.

What did she have to do that for?

“Hmph. This is about now, not ten years later. How can there be a tomorrow unless you survive today?”

“That’s a great line and all…”

But it meant prostrating yourself?

How pathetic. What kind of tomorrow awaited someone performing a dogeza today?

“I’m still gonna ask you, though, just in case,” I said. “You’re not doing this kind of shit outside the house, are you? Like with your friends or classmates…or teachers at school?”

“Of course not! Everyone looks up to me.”

“……”

“My rule is that I only bow down to my big brother!”

“Don’t be singling me out.”

True, partly on account of her popularity, I did think at some point that she “resembled” Kanbaru. Due to their different circumstances, there were various minor dissimilarities, of course, but they definitely had a lot in common. Karen hearing rumors abut Kanbaru and idolizing her wasn’t unthinkable.

It wasn’t, but…

Hmm.

“I’m surprised Tsukihi was willing to lend you her clothes, though… They’re probably going to get all stretched out on you.”

“Yeah. That’s why I borrowed them without asking.”

“……”

She was gonna get chewed out. Tsukihi was even scarier than her.

“Well, I don’t think it was designed to be that provocative.”

You better not walk up any stairs, I cautioned, to which she retorted, I’d never step out of the house in this embarrassing outfit.

About only Level 2 on her anger scale.

“By the way, Karen, how did you know that Kanbaru and I are friends?”

“They don’t get her permission for those pics, do they!”

Unofficial fan club? Kanbaru Seule?!

Ah, of course, their cell phones! My parents decided to give both my sisters cell phones, at last, starting this summer, in light of the rash behavior that the “defenders of justice” get up to.

It was a bad idea.

The information age was terrifying. The world was truly going to hell in a hand basket.

“Whaaat? Koyomi, isn’t that a pretty old-fashioned way of thinking? Adults are always complaining about kids using phones during class, but back when they were kids, didn’t they work on other stuff and pass notes and all that?”

“Well, true.”

The tools change, but our behavior doesn’t. People are people.

Comparing a culture vertically is pointless.

Okay, that last line is Hanekawa’s, verbatim.

“When I dug a little deeper,” Karen reprised, “I found out that Kanbaru-sensei holds you in high esteem! I don’t know what trick you used, but she looks up to you as some sort of mentor?”

“And so, Koyomi, you’ve become a real person of interest among middle-school girls. ‘Who’s this short dude bossing Kanbaru-sensei around like some errand girl?’”

“Junior high kids I’ve never even met have got it out for me…” I wasn’t bossing her around, and if anyone was being inconvenienced by her devotion, it was this guy, right here.

“No, they’re all your fans. You’re the burning focus of envious middle-school girls.”

“So much charisma, without my even noticing…” It was unpleasant in its own way. There was such a thing as bad publicity.

“Fate, eh…”

“I bet she and I would get along just swell, actually,” Karen muttered as if she were just talking out loud, folding her hands behind her head, whistling, and casting furtive glances at me.

That was apparently her attempt at nonchalance.

Well, she and Kanbaru probably would get along─they were both jocks and tomboys.

All the same…

All the same, I didn’t intend to introduce my sister to Kanbaru.

Not a chance in hell. I had my reasons.

Namely─I happened to be aware of the sportswoman and national-level athlete Kanbaru’s little-known sexual proclivities.

“Karen.”

“What is it, brother dear?”

Szukk.

An unnatural sound emanated from my stomach. It almost sounded like a spade being buried into dirt.

Sister had resorted to violence against brother, and without a moment’s hesitation.

A lightning-quick spearhand jab right between the ribs.

It felt like my liver was gone.

“Now, now, Koyomi. Let’s talk this over.”

“……”

It wasn’t even a matter of pain. I simply couldn’t speak.

“You’re not ready to oblige your cute little sister? Fine, I’ve got some ideas.”

“H-Hrk…”

Karen was sounding like a regular hoodlum. What she had weren’t “ideas”; the gods had granted to someone they absolutely shouldn’t have something they absolutely shouldn’t have.

If they were going to endow her with that option, equip her with some ideas first!

“Wh-Who ever heard of going straight from a dogeza to violence… Give me a break!” I was finally able to speak, but I could feel my diaphragm vibrating against my guts, and my voice came out too strained and plaintive to call it quipping. “What d’you mean?”

I did like the first one best; I find it small-minded and limited of viewers to huff that only the initial series is truly Gundam or that they won’t accept the new Kamen Rider, but when I consider the evolution of Pretty Cure, I kind of know how they feel.

“Your idea of talking things over involves fists.”

As Tsukihi once said to me, in the context of human culture, punching and kicking was actually a means of communication. I think that only applied, though, when the parties were evenly matched. One-sided violence didn’t qualify.

Can we take a moment to recap?

Let’s try that now.

Karen Araragi’s goal was to get me to introduce her to Suruga Kanbaru─or more accurately, to get me to introduce Suruga Kanbaru to her.

That seemed pretty set. Firmly, immovably.

Karen was the type to balk at nothing to reach her goal.

But there was another side to it─Karen rarely pursued goals for her own sake. She was surprisingly selfless in that regard. While she never hesitated to act on someone else’s behalf, her own will could be incredibly weak.

Even feeble.

When she did have a clear goal of her own like now, she was very insistent, and I, for my part, wanted to do everything I could to help her achieve it.

However.

This time─I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to introduce Kanbaru to her.

That was my standpoint, Koyomi Araragi’s objective.

Experiencing the occasional setback built character. I didn’t want Karen and Tsukihi to turn into people who’re squashed by a setback─that was my stance.

There was no room for compromise between us. We were in total opposition on the matter.

If it came to blows I’d lose.

No way I could beat Karen in a fight.

Well, if we’re being precise, with full backup from Shinobu, I couldn’t lose─but per human rules that was probably out of bounds.

I thought this staring down at my shadow.

“Hrm…”

In any case, we weren’t going to resolve this by talking things over or punching things out. Getting beaten up wasn’t going to change my mind, if I do say so like it didn’t concern myself.

I’m large enough to accept any amount of violence my sister can dish out─I’d like to think so, being her older brother and all.

“I guess this calls for a match,” I said.

“Huh?”

“When we disagree, we have a match. That’s how it’s been between us.”

It won’t be an even one, though, I added.

I returned to my desk and closed my drills. I had no choice but to cancel my early-morning study session. I’d make up for it later.

No English vocabulary word superseded family matters.

“Ah…”

Glimmer.

Her tone shifted. She lit up, as they say. She was equipped with a vector-motion sensor that responded automatically to any mention of a serious match.

She was as dense as ever.

So dense that it sometimes made my skin crawl.

At this rate, she was going to grow up a catastrophe of a person─setbacks or otherwise, if she didn’t learn better, she was going to be “at risk.” So much so that I’d be worried even if she wasn’t my sister. Seriously at risk, dangerously so.

Well.

How to go about it? She said I could set any rules I want, but I couldn’t make it too hard of a challenge.

My sister had a developed sense of distaste for cowardice and opportunism. Her “burning soul of justice” supposedly didn’t tolerate it.

That’s what I needed, but I was drawing a blank.

While I didn’t want to make it too hard, for Karen not many challenges fit that description to begin with.

I mean, she’d even undergone a hundred-man kumite─and come out with a winning record. She was a lot gutsier than your average person.

If I hadn’t made it in time, it would have ended in tragedy…

How the heck did that happen to you in such a peaceful town?

In other words, excessive gutsiness was a problem. Too much could be worse than too little.

Even apart from the whole soul-of-justice issue.

She didn’t know how to back down─so you had to back up. Miss Passionate was the type to confront an enemy even when she was ill.

In that sense, I was the one in a fix here… It’d have to be hard and great if I was going to force her to admit defeat.

Pain didn’t pain her, and shame couldn’t shame her.

Okay, she was kind of incredible… Calling her M cool fell short.

Was she really my sister?

Maybe she was adopted?

Hey, that’d be kinda moé.

Mmm, right. This was all because of Kanbaru. In which case, what if I followed Kanbaru’s lead?

“Wait here a second,” I said. “I’ll go get what we need.”

“What we need? Are you planning on having us play cards? No fair!”

How bad did you have to be at games where you used your brains to think that?

Fear not, Karen, I won’t go that route. You won’t admit defeat if I did.

It had to be something that seemed possible but wasn’t (though I honestly worried about my sister’s future if a game of cards was too much for her).

I left Karen in my room and went down to the bathroom. I found what I was looking for right away and returned with the items.

Karen was sprawled out on the bed.

Talk about making yourself at home. Her legs were spread out audaciously, with her underwear clearly on display.

“Ah, Koyomi. That was fast.”

“Were you seriously trying to take a nap while I was gone? Are you Nobita or what?”

“‘No better’? But I am, thanks to my beauty sleep.”

“That wasn’t even clever.”

“Be nice or I’ll start sulking ‘Suneo’ later,” she shot back, working in another character from Doraemon.

“Hm? Koyomi, what’s that you’re holding?”

With that observant remark, Karen sat up. The way she rubbed her eyes, she hadn’t been just lying down but actually napping.

Was I dealing with a wild animal? Or some sort of grizzled soldier?

“That’s my toothbrush,” she said.

“Y-You don’t mean…” Karen looked uncharacteristically afraid, even a little green around the gills.

Hm. She was quick on the uptake, all right. Being a wild-animal grizzled soldier, maybe she’d figured it out.

……

I was the one taken by surprise now. I felt like I’d grown some gills before going green around them.

What the hell went through that head of hers?

“I should have known any brother of mine would be capable of cooking up something truly fiendish!”

“Really? When some stalker was following around one of the girls in her class, Tsukihi came up with a similar punishment.”

“I’m scared!”

My little sister was absolutely terrifying! Well, yes, it did sound like the sort of thing Tsukihi might come up with! Karen, herself, tended not to think along those lines.

“Hey, don’t lump me in with Tsukihi.”

“I’m not. You’re in a different league.”

“I’m in a different everything from her.”

I was a little aghast. Tsukihi was a worse punk than Karen and could join a women’s biker gang. Her own brother certainly felt intimidated.

Given the vibes I was getting, I probably shouldn’t mention to her, for the time being, that Kanbaru used to stalk me.

“A coward, huh? Yeah,” I assented, “I’m not gonna stick up for a guy who chases middle-school girls’ skirts.”

“Oh, that reminds me. Tsukihi said she’s investigating another rumor like that.”

“A rumor?”

“O-Oh.”

Wh-Wh-Wh-What a pervert, I agreed, averting my eyes with all I had.

Sometimes I forget that Mayoi Hachikuji isn’t some kind of otherworldly fairy that only Hanekawa and I can see.

So there were eyewitnesses, if not many.

Ubiquitous.

“If some scumbag out there is sexually harassing innocent little girls,” Karen fumed, “I won’t leave it up to Tsukihi. I’ll get in on the action and rearrange the guy’s face.”

“Ha…hahahaha. You two sure keep busy, huh? Tell you what, if you find out anything else, come straight to me. You won’t regret it.”

“But of course. Hahahaha.”

“We’re getting off topic, though, aren’t we? If you’re not sticking it in my butt, then what the heck is that toothbrush for? What else would anyone do with a toothbrush?”

“……”

However!

Believe it or not, Kanbaru’s perverse imagination soared even higher! The spirit of that woman far outstripped pale words like “stalker” and “pervert”!

Which is why I didn’t want to introduce them!

“Karen, you mean you didn’t know? A toothbrush is a tool that many people use to brush their teeth.”

“A-Ah. That does ring a bell.”

Ack. I was getting off topic again. Since we were talking about Kanbaru, I couldn’t help but think of cleaning. Tomorrow was the fifteenth, so I needed to go help with her room as usual.

“Right. I’m not.” I nodded. “I’m not making you…because I’ll do the brushing.”

“…?” Karen cocked her head. The gravity of the situation still eluded her. “Um, I don’t get it… You’re gonna brush my teeth for me? Why? I mean, if you want to, I don’t mind…but how is that any sort of match?”

Heheheh. Knowing that her aloof expression wouldn’t be on her face for much longer filled my heart with joy.

“You and Tsukihi both get your hair cut at a salon, don’t you? Me, I get queasy about it. Having some stranger touch my head makes me weirdly tense.”

“Well, I see what you mean. I wouldn’t want to get my hair cut by a stylist that I don’t know.”

Hachikuji was like that.

“Yeah…so?” asked Karen, a touch of wariness in her voice. Unable to see where this was going, she was feeling anxious. Her vigilance was second to none.

“It’s a matter of touch─a haircut is the simplest example, but I could give others. Would you ever trust a non-professional to perform a full-body massage on you? It’s that sort of thing.”

“Brushing one’s teeth is that sort of thing,” I said, though I didn’t know why I was speaking deliberately like I was giving a lecture. “You seem unperturbed, but having someone brush your teeth isn’t a common experience. Unlike a haircut or a massage, it’s something you can usually manage yourself and do take care of on your own.”

“Haha!”

Faced with the rules and conditions, the match that I laid out, Karen laughed─like she was relieved. Actually, it was more of a snort, as if the wind had just been let out of her sails.

“Wow,” she said, “the way you were making such a big deal of this, I was starting to get scared. Now I’m kind of disappointed.”

“Are you?”

Well, lookee here. She thought she was dealing with an amateur.

“……”

I knew full well that she was impervious to shame. How many years did she think I’d been her big brother?

In fact, I became her big brother before she was even born!

“Sure,” I consented, “if I break first you win.”

“KY?”

“You can’t read the air.”

“Ah”─kuuki yomenai─“I’ve heard that one before.”

“How about SF for ‘a bit mysterious’? I wonder why.”

“What a grandmaster…so far ahead of his times.”

That wordplay, sukoshi fushigi, belonged to Fujio Fujiko. It was more than a bit mysterious, but enough of that.

“Let’s begin,” I said. “Sit there.”

Karen plopped herself down on the bed willy-nilly, sending her skirt flipping up in a mess. Maybe she wasn’t used to wearing one, and the hem was also too short, but clearly skirts weren’t meant for her, I thought as I sat down next to her.

Like best friends.

“Say ‘ahh.’”

“Ahh.”

I had her open her mouth and inserted the toothbrush.

Now then.

Time to experience the terror that was Kanbaru-sensei.

Take comfort in knowing that none other than Kanbaru’s fetishistic sensibility was your downfall!

“Gh…mphh?!”

Karen finally seemed to grasp the danger she had stumbled into approximately a minute into the match.

I’d never seen a face look so alarmed─and ecstatic.

“Mm…mmph, g-grk?!”

Now she understood.

Too late, Karen-chan.

The match was on.

Yes. My talk of hair salons and massages had been misdirection. Getting your teeth brushed is on a different plane.

We’re talking about fiddling around in your mouth.

Let’s not sugarcoat it. The truth is that it generates pleasure.

In other words, it feels good.

Brushing your teeth is such an everyday act that you become accustomed to it and don’t notice─I hadn’t thought about it, either, until Kanbaru pointed it out to me.

Yet it’s a stern fact.

Karen had guts. She didn’t bend to pain or humiliation.

She was a masochist, you could say. A total, utter masochist.

Which is exactly what made pleasing her, indulging her in this way such an effective means of breaking her spirit.

“Ng-gh…nmmphh!”

As I focused on a spot behind her molars and scrubbed where tooth met gum, Karen reacted in a most sensitive manner. Her body started to twitch and convulse.

Her eyes seemed about to roll back.

This was getting scary in its own way…

It was my first time trying this, but the great Kanbaru-sensei certainly lived up to her name.

You don’t want to meet the woman who came up with this crazy idea!

“Ng-gh…huph, huph, huph. N…gh, ahh, ahhh…”

Unfortunately─I had miscalculated.

I’d failed to account for just how gutsy Karen Araragi was. Not even pleasure could break this Gutsy Frog.

This whole girls’ manga-like situation of being pleasured by her older brother must have felt really naughty to her, and yet… Hmph, not bad, Karen. Not bad at all.

She was inspiring me to try harder.

The underside of her tongue, to be precise─that part of the body was pretty much exposed muscle.

“Karen, you’ll feel so much better if you just gave up─correction! Give up and it won’t feel so good anymore!”

She was in tickling hell. There was no way she could endure this.

Another minute was the most she could take!

“Uh oh… Hold on?!”

I guess Kanbaru figured it was too obvious to mention, but there was a serious pitfall in this match (which probably wasn’t how she thought of it in the first place).

I’d focused on the psyche of the brushee and rushed into this without stopping to consider the very important matter of how I, the brusher, would feel.

“Aaah… Pheuuu. H-Hnkk!”

……

Holy shit!

Karen’s moaning gasps were making me feel all funny inside!

My heart was thumping faster!

Her every reaction was getting me worked up!

What was this complex feeling, like we were breaking a taboo?!

Knowing that I was pleasuring my own sister felt so immoral!

Was I satisfying myself the most by brushing someone else’s teeth rather than mine?!

Was I so happy to be of use?!

Is this what my schoolteachers call “service”?!

Okay, probably not!

If I didn’t stop working the brush immediately, something terrible might happen─but even though I knew that, knew that this was wrong, my hand seemed to have a mind of its own. Like some sort of automated machine (an electric toothbrush, even), it refused to stop.

Karen’s convulsions, likewise, intensified─she was clutching the bed sheet firmly in her hands, I guess because she couldn’t grit her teeth, but that still wasn’t enough to keep her body in check.

And her face had turned crimson red, like it was about to burst into flame.

Holy. She looked so cute.

Earlier, it was only because she’d been threatening me that I praised how she looked in a skirt. No, I mean, it was just a slip of the tongue, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her she was cute now─but I couldn’t retract having thought so.

Once the data leaked, you couldn’t retrieve it.

Holy.

Holy, holy, holy.

This was insane.

Wait… Wait a sec…

Was my little sister actually the cutest girl in the world?

Until now, I’d considered my ideal woman to be Tsubasa Hanekawa, but had I been mistaken? Even if she didn’t top Hanekawa, did Karen give her a good run for her money?

Whoa, whoa, hold up!

Koyomi Araragi, stop right there! Do you hear what you’re saying?!

This was an illusion, all an illusion! I was just drunk on the bizarre situation!

I saw that, knew it was true!

A-And yet…

“N-Nuhhh…” I moaned as if joining Karen in chorus.

There was some kind of synergy. I lost sight of myself.

What an idiotic mental circuitry mine was.

How could brushing someone’s teeth backfire so horrendously? I had stumbled into dealing with dark, forbidden arts.

But it was far too late for regret.

Ignorance was no defense. Ignorance would be my undoing.

This was beyond my control. My only choice was to let the pieces fall where they may.

“K-Karen…”

That stuff people stick in their mouths and light up to breathe the smoke? Those super dangerous cancer sticks or whatever that are so terrible for you?

Imagine if they were some stupendous health supplement that made you better the more you smoked.

Would they ever have gotten as popular?

You couldn’t help wondering.

Maybe it’s precisely because it’s bad for you─because you shouldn’t─that so many people smoke. That so many don’t stop even now.

It’s wrong, you’re not supposed to do it. Precisely for that reason─

It’s terribly enticing.

It’s terribly numbing.

By the time you realize…

By the time I realized─I’d pushed Karen down onto my bed.

With my left hand still cradling her head, I’d leaned over her and pinned her down.

She was bigger than me, but I only had to use a fraction of my weight─and she went down smoothly, not resisting.

She was swooning, melting into puddles.

She was in heaven.

“Karen, Karen. Karen…”

I repeated her name, over and over. Every time I spoke it, a fever flared up from deep inside me.

Karen’s body, too, was hot.

“B-Big bwother…”

Thanks to the toothbrush inserted in her mouth─well, probably even if it hadn’t been there─she was lisping, her pupils unfocused.

“B-Big bwother… Go ahead.”

Ahead?!

Ahead to where?!

That’s how I’d wisecrack under normal circumstances, but I was feeling all sloppy as well.

Sloppy. Slippery.

Syrupy. Seeping.

Woolly. Woozy.

Wobbly. Worming.

I, Koyomi Araragi, gently removed my left hand from behind Karen Araragi’s head and slowly extended it toward her breasts─

That was when a boorish, insensitive, deflating─no, a saving voice cut in.

When I turned to look at the doorway that I had apparently left open, my other sibling, my littler little sister, that is to say Tsukihi, dressed in her traditional Japanese clothing, stood there awestruck.

“Koyomi? Karen? What in tarnation?”

For some reason Tsukihi was speaking with a Kyoto accent. It fact, it sounded a little like the Gion courtesan variant.

I guess she was confused.

“W-Wait, Tsukihi,” I shouted, “don’t get us wrong!”

“Koyomi, why are you brushing Karen’s teeth and pushing her down on your bed with loving kindness written all over your face? And Karen, why are you dressed in my clothes with a swoon in your eyes when Koyomi is pinning you on his bed?”

Tsukihi had recovered her senses enough to drop her accent, but the question she posed wasn’t as easy to dismiss.

The cold stare, coming from Tsukihi, was enough to shock me and Karen back to our senses.

Once I snapped out of it─

It was just as Tsukihi said. In other words, her question couldn’t be dismissed.

“Whaaat? Why am I dressed in your clothes with a swoon in my eyes when Koyomi is pinning me on his bed?!”

“Unbelievable!”

“Unbelievable!”

It was unbelievable. I’d never been so shocked in my life.

That…was…close!

Now there was a line you didn’t cross!

Taboo, too taboo!

“Y-You saved us, Tsukihi! Thank you!”

Said Karen and I, in unison.

It wasn’t just our voices that were in synch. We whipped our bodies in Tsukihi’s direction and thrust a finger at her, our movements perfectly identical.

If this were synchronized swimming, we were golden.

A tin medal at the arcade was all we were going to win.

I mean, I was still propped on top of Karen as we spoke.

“Huh… Huh.”

Indeed, what Tsukihi did next was to nod with great interest.

Her eyes were no longer even narrowed, but shut tight, and her face was expressionless.

Karen and I were breathing hard, for an entirely different reason this time.

Viscous beads of sweat slithered across my skin.

“Yup…”

When Tsukihi raised her head, her face was cheerful and bright.

It looked like we were going to receive a sympathetic verdict. Maybe allowances would be made for extenuating circumstances, or at the least we would get a suspended sentence. Karen and I perked up.

Swoosh, went the rug out from under our feet.

A death sentence.

Man, an awl…

With a grin frozen on her face yet unsmiling, Tsukihi, at anger level 99, went out into the hall. Wham, she slammed the door behind her with withering force.

The comment seemed a little misguided. Tsukihi ignored it completely.

Her feet went pounding down the stairs, and then soon all was quiet.

Yikes. What had just happened?

What to do?

Well, the more pressing issue was probably what was going to be done to us.

“Koyomi, you’re crushing me,” Karen complained as I wracked my head.

“Oh, sorry.”

I got off of her. She sat up as well and rearranged her disheveled de facto miniskirt. She seemed a little self-conscious.

“Koyomi, about our match?”

“Huh?”

Match? Was that word supposed to mean something to me? Was it the name of some plant? One of the vocabulary words I’d memorized that morning?

When I cocked my head in confusion, she added, “It’s been way more than five minutes.”

Indeed, the five minutes were up. Or rather, fifteen minutes had passed.

No wonder Tsukihi stumbled on us like that.

“Aw, shucks…”

Ouch. I’d lost.

Actually, putting aside having lost, I had to give props to Karen for her tenacity. It was time for me to cede her the respect she was owed.

For fifteen minutes, too. She was a monster.

“Ha, I guess you got me… A promise is a promise. Okay, okay, Karen, I’ll introduce you to Kanbaru.”

That didn’t mean I liked it one bit, but if Karen really wanted to meet Kanbaru, I didn’t have any reason to interfere. Or at least no right.

“You did well, Karen. Victory is yours. Yup, I guess today was my turn to lose. I give.”

“Mm-m…”

Despite my congratulations, her response seemed lukewarm.

Ahem, she cleared her throat loudly as I wondered what was up. Ahem, ah-h-hem.

She coughed several times, apparently on purpose─and then hunched her large frame into a coy ball.

“Yeah?”

“W-Well, if you want, I mean only if you insist, I guess we could go for two out of three.”

“……”

“S-See, Tsukihi interrupted us before we were done, so usually it wouldn’t count. B-Besides, we’ve got plenty of time to kill until she gets back. I wouldn’t mind keeping you company for a few more rounds…”

“Well…” I─quietly gripped the toothbrush, which was still in my hand. “I-In that case, I’ll request a rematch…maybe?”

“O-Of course. I wouldn’t want to r-run…from a challenge… I accept!”

“Sh-Should we switch dealers?”

“Okay. Th-That only sounds fair!”

Neither of us meeting the other’s eyes─we plunged into a best-of-three match.

Karen and I began to get along just a little better.

And so I was currently heading to Kanbaru’s with Karen.

A promise may have been a promise, but considering nothing was written down, I was under no obligation to keep it. Still, a promise is a promise is a promise.

Of course, since she was about to meet the great Kanbaru-sensei, it was no ordinary jersey. It was her best outfit, the lucky one she only wore on special occasions: a loud and flashy, fluorescent bicycle-racing jersey finished off on the bottom with a smart set of cycling shorts.

I guess no one asked for that info…

I did own a bicycle, by the way, but wasn’t riding it.

Although I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Kanbaru’s house was isolated, it was a bit far to walk. Nevertheless, I decided to hoof it because I wanted to avoid riding two on a bike (not on principle, just with my sister).

Now I was riding on her shoulders.

You know, once you got used to it, it was actually kind of fun being up so high.

Well, my reluctance to ride two to a bicycle with my little sister leading to me riding on her shoulders proved how halting and awkward our conversations were, even if we were getting along a little better.

However.

What I hadn’t expected was Kanbaru’s response.

The call did connect, but her reaction surprised me.

“I don’t know, my senior Araragi. That doesn’t sound like a very good idea. I did express my interest in your little sister, but it was just a joke. I wasn’t being serious.”

When I pressed her, she seemed genuinely distressed.

“As grateful as I am that you would think of me, I wouldn’t feel right taking your sister’s virginity.”

“Who said you could?!” I’d rather take it myself in that case! Drop dead!

“I do appreciate the thought.”

And so.

Kanbaru’s unexpected response just meant she was the same wonderful woman I’d come to know and expect. Eventually, after a little pushing, I was able to successfully arrange a noontime visit to her house with Karen.

“Sure thing,” Kanbaru said. “I’ll put on clothes and wait for you.”

“Why is nudity the default…”

Karen would beat the crap out of me. I wouldn’t like that.

……

What a silly question. What even made her think of that? I’m pretty sure we hadn’t passed any emergency vehicles.

“Maybe it does happen once in a while,” I answered. “But if there were three emergency numbers, for the police, ambulances, and the fire department, and they were all different, won’t people have trouble remembering them all?”

“Well, just think about it. Have you ever meant to call the weather forecast and gotten the current time instead?”

“Never.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve called for the time and gotten the weather forecast instead, though.”

“Same thing.”

“Really? If someone’s injured the police could arrest the assailant, and if there’s a fire they could arrest the arsonist.”

“Why do injuries and fires have to be crime-related for you?” Her idea of justice was dangerous. Her premise was criminal behavior.

“I’d never yell that even if I got angry.”

“If an ambulance came to a fire, you’d get angry too. ‘What, did you just assume that I got burned?!’”

“That sounds like a reasonable assumption.”

“It’d be different if a police car showed up. You wouldn’t get angry. They’d arrest you.”

“For a defender of justice, you bend pretty quickly to the state.”

“Yeah… I’m the one who always has to pick you up from the station.”

Geez, I didn’t want to be reminded. I’d ended up befriending a female officer for no reason.

“Hmm, you can’t win them all. It’s so hard to make everyone happy. Well, the perp would get scared off by the sound of the sirens, so I guess it’s okay?”

“Like a panic buzzer?”

“‘We’? I don’t have that kind of power. Besides, I’m not sure, but isn’t 111 probably already assigned to something? Come to think of it, all the numbers starting with ‘1-1’ must be taken.”

“Maybe, but I bet 111 is just the number for some lottery. I don’t see why they shouldn’t have to give it up.”

Give me a break.

Our banter would sound hopelessly moronic to someone like Hanekawa, who no doubt knew the answer to all this.

This conversation went beyond halting. We were headed straight into the bushes.

“Huh? What do you mean? Quit talking nonsense or I’ll punch you.”

“Aren’t you being a little too impatient with your older brother?!”

“I am?”

“Ah, rotary. I might have, I’m not sure. That word ‘rotary’ does sound pretty retro, though.”

“What about ‘1’?”

“Hm?”

“If the ‘0’ and ‘9’ took time to dial, what about the ‘1’? Did that take time to dial, too?”

“No, the ‘1’…was on the other end, I think.” Meaning it actually took the least amount of time to turn. Hrrm.

“Shouldn’t they have made the emergency numbers 009 and 000 in that case?”

“I get that. I totally get that.”

“You do? You actually do?”

“What about 000?”

“Everyone knows you can’t use one number in a row for your PIN. There are too many people out to scam you these days. You gotta watch out, okay?”

“We were talking about phone numbers.”

“If it’s not interesting, I’m going to punch you.”

“How about a less scary rejoinder!”

“Get on with it.”

“Actually, it’s just some math trivia I learned from Hanekawa. Think of a three-digit number. Any, including 110 or 119. Now repeat it.”

“Okey dokey.”

Seven was a solitary number, but since it was solitary, nothing remained─when you put it that way it sounded pretty deep. But honestly, it was just a mathematical trick.

“Huh,” Karen grunted. “Let me give it a try… Uh, wait…I’ve got three left over.”

And so on.

And so forth.

As described above, around noon on August fourteenth, on our way to the Kanbaru residence, I was engaged in an unproductive, harmless, and not particularly interesting conversation with Karen, on whose shoulders I sat─

When at the same vantage point more than seven feet off the ground─

“You, fiendish young man─there’s something I’m keen to ask. Can you spare a moment?”

The tallest person I’ve ever met, it goes without saying, is Dramaturgy, the vampire hunter. In addition to his seven feet, thanks to the traumatically terrible impression he left, I recall him as being closer to eight or even ten feet tall.

In any case, if you’re wondering if she, who had appeared before my eyes, rivaled even Dramaturgy in height, that is not in fact the case. Purely in terms of stature, she didn’t look much taller or shorter than me.

She was merely propped on top of something that added to her natural height─just as I was propped atop Karen’s shoulders.

This person was─standing on a mailbox.

“I’m fixing to get to Eikow Cram School. Can you tell a body how to get there?”

Kyoto dialect─and not the pidgin accent my sister Tsukihi slipped into, confused, in the morning. From what I could tell, it was the genuine article.

The shorthaired woman wore a cool, detached expression.

That is, of course, if you ignored the fact that she was standing on a mailbox.

“Umm…”

Enough fun and games?

Was playtime over?

Well, after more than a hundred manuscript pages of goofing off, even I was starting to feel a little full.

“Hey, fiendish young man,” the woman said. Still in Kyoto dialect, her words sounded pushy, but her expression was laidback. “Didn’t your folk rear you to be kind to a body in trouble?”

“Um, well…”

I was at a loss for words. Of course, I had been taught to be nice to people in trouble, but the lady didn’t really look to be in trouble. And I certainly wasn’t taught to be nice to people who stand on mailboxes.

If anything, I needed to tell her to stop that.

You couldn’t fault the woman for calling me fiendish. In fact, it was sort of impressive that she’d asked me for directions.

Usually, you didn’t introduce yourself just to ask directions (nor did you stand on a mailbox─but maybe neither was as unusual as making your little sister carry you around). Was this lady famous enough to receive special treatment when she gave her name?

If she was, her fame rivaled an actress or politician’s.

Being pretty clueless about both celebrities and politics, however, I didn’t have much faith in my judgment. Maybe I was facing a VIP.

I glanced down at Karen to check her reaction.

“……”

A blank slate.

Hmm. Come to think of it, Karen was just as clueless when it came to celebrities and politics.

I took another glance at the lady─at Yozuru Kagenui.

She did have a pretty face.

Was she a pop star known for her Kyoto dialect?

It wouldn’t do not to introduce myself in turn.

“I’m Koyomi Araragi,” I replied for the time being.

“I’m Karen Araragi,” my sister followed suit. Just when I thought she was a good girl who knew her manners, she continued, “Some folks choose to call me one of the Fire Sisters, but what can I say.”

“Hmm… A fiendish older brother─and the little sister a hornet. Amusing.”

“……”

Huh? Did she just say─hornet?

“Oh, uh…”

Ei…kow… Eikow Cram School…

Unfortunately, I’d never heard of it… There were a few cram schools near the train station, maybe it was one of those. Should I just point her in that direction?

She did look like she was traveling.

No one in our town dyed our hair. I doubt you could even buy hair dye around here.

When Karen turned hers pink on a lark way back when, apparently she’d done it with regular paint. It was colored over with India ink, so it must have been a crazy marbled mess right afterwards.

Dying her hair on a whim, chopping it off on another. My sister loves to trash her equivalent of life.

“Let me see, just a second,” I muttered.

But perhaps, like a certain someone who used to live in our town, Kagenui sucked at anything tech. Perhaps she belonged to the rotary-phone generation (←a most definitely rude thought).

Sheesh, what sort of defender of justice did that make her…

At the end of the day, I was about as useless as Karen.

When in trouble, rely on Hanekawa.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, my classmate and our class president. A model student among model students boasting top scores in the national mock exams─no, who didn’t even boast about it because she was in a league of her own.

I did ask her to take Obon off, though.

It was time for a phone call!

A phone call to Miss Hanekawa!

Oh lucky day!

You might consider me a nuisance for calling my savior, Tsubasa Hanekawa, over such a trivial matter, but trivial matters are what I want to discuss most with Hanekawa!

At least…

That said, I needed to keep the call brief today and cut out the chitchat. This part of the story didn’t feel like a comic-relief sequence. I just had to ask where Eikow Cram School was, and frankly, to hear her voice.

Lunchtime learning… It sounded like a segment on a TV show.

Despite her nation-leading scores, Hanekawa had no intention of applying to college, so these were probably private studies.

“Private studies” was some phrase when I thought about it…

“Araragi, you’re not thinking dirty thoughts, are you?” she quipped on cue. I swear, she had ESP. I couldn’t even fantasize safely. “Also, it sounds like you’re outside. Are you sure you’re studying?”

So sharp.

“Also, Araragi, it sounds like you’re speaking from a position about three feet higher than usual. Please tell me you’re not making Karen carry you on her shoulders?”

Too sharp!

This was getting into horror territory!

Come on. That made it seem like I’m super-short…

What a way to put it. Some pervert she was making me out to be.

No, I wasn’t bullying or toying with Karen… But now that Hanekawa put it so matter-of-factly, I had to wonder what the heck I was doing on my little sister’s shoulders.

“Eikow Cram School? Yes, I do know it,” Hanekawa said.

She did know. She really did…

I’d hyped her to the lady, but Hanekawa was the self-educated variety of genius. Though I hadn’t really expected her to know where all the cram schools in the country are, now I half-believed it.

How wonderful.

Every time I heard her say it, I was reminded that I had lived another day.

……

Well, I made her say it so often, lately I had a distinct feeling that she was just humoring me with that reply. She’d look a bit put-upon half of the time.

But how I loved the face she made!

Wow. That was beyond sharp. That was pointed.

Piercing.

“You know,” she lamented, “I’m beginning to give up on making you turn over a new leaf.”

Don’t give up, Hanekawa! Don’t abandon me!

I had a lecture to look forward to.

A part of me thought, Crap, now I’ve done it, I’m gonna get scolded by Hanekawa! But another part of me couldn’t help but feel excited at the prospect, so I guess I was Karen’s brother after all.

The Araragi siblings. We were M cool.

Hanekawa didn’t make too much of it, but when I heard her answer, I was both surprised and persuaded.

I was surprised to learn that the place I knew so well, the cram school in those memorable ruins where I spent most of spring break, (obviously) had a name.

Eikow Cram School, huh? That place had such a smart-sounding name? Given that they once took up a whole building, I did figure they were fairly big even if they weren’t a famous chain.

Humph…

But I could think about that later. I didn’t want to keep the lady waiting or interfere with Hanekawa’s studies.

When I thanked Hanekawa, she replied, “No need to thank me, that was nothing. Okay, Araragi. Say hello to Kanbaru for me. Bye-bye.”

I hung up.

Wait a sec… I never said a word about going to see Kanbaru…

All I meant to do was ask for directions real quick, and I’d surrendered my privacy.

What a terrible deal.

Now Hanekawa thought of me as a guy who fantasized about the class president and enjoyed shoving his crotch into the back of his little sister’s head as he headed to a female schoolmate’s house…

“Any progress, fiendish young man?”

I was starting to feel a little cobalt and a little blue (in other words, I was feeling cobalt blue), but the lady’s voice brought me back to Earth.

“Ah, yes… Let’s see…”

Yet three or so problems remained.

One: that building was off the beaten track, so explaining the way step by step didn’t mean that she’d get it right─it was easy to explain but hard to understand.

That worry, however, proved unfounded. Despite her funky, acrobatic entry atop a mailbox, Ms. Kagneui seemed to possess a decent head on her shoulders. I only had to explain once for her to get it.

“A-ha. Hm, I see, that way.”

As for the second problem:

“It’s pretty far, though… Will you be all right?”

“Don’t fuss yourself about me. I got from home to here on foot fair enough. Anything up to fifty miles is just a daunder in my mind.”

Amazing. That was even more amazing than anything up to four hundred pounds not counting as weight for Karen.

Oh, uh, was it just a joke?

But if she said she was fine, then I guess she was. I decided to put that aside and move on─to the third problem.

“That cram school has gone under, though. Ms. Kagenui, what do you want to go there for?”

I’d simply been asked for directions and had no cause to pry. Whatever she wanted to do there was her own business. I didn’t need to know.

Maybe there were reasons to visit a cram school that had gone bankrupt. Those reasons surely had nothing to do with me.

Still, try to see where I was coming from.

Not so much that it was worth mentioning. But mention it I had.

“Eh, what do I want to gang there for? For starters, I might set up base there,” Kagenui deflected with a vague answer, just as you might expect.

All I’d done was give her directions. It had given me the opportunity to talk to Hanekawa when she wasn’t tutoring me, so in any case, as far as I was concerned, I’d been paid back any debt in kind.

We were even.

With that─Kagenui leapt from atop the mailbox.

And onto a nearby concrete block wall─that is to say, to a more elevated point of view than my own─before strutting away like a gymnast traversing a balance beam, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Ahh…of course.

She was playing that game. The ground was a shark-infested ocean, and she’d get eaten if she descended too low… Well, I did play it, too─when I was a kid.

That’s why she’d been standing on a mailbox…

“Ah, sorry,” apologized Karen, not noticing my subtle diversion of blame, my elegant pass. “It’s just, I don’t know─she seemed really strong. I was on guard.”

“Strong?”

“Oh yeah? Not to me,” I disagreed. “Putting aside her speech and behavior, she seemed like a pretty lady you’d find anywhere.”

“While she was talking to you, the axis of her body didn’t bend even an inch. She has a figure skater’s sense of balance.”

“Uhh, sure… But she was really built. Her fists were the perfect shape for beating the crap out of people.”

“Th-They were?”

“Yeah. At her level, if she punched a car on its bumper, she’d set off the airbag.”

“Hmph.”

Traffic-accident level.

I found that hard to believe… Astonishing if true.

Barking dogs seldom bite, and perhaps the opposite was also true.

“Well, come to think of it,” I admitted, “she did seem pretty relaxed and confident─intrepid, or indomitable. She had the kind of vibe that only people who’re sure of their fighting abilities do.”

In terms of civilians, Kanbaru, whom we were on our way to see, had a bit of that going. Or Karen, I suppose, for that matter.

They were the same breed.

“My master might be an even match,” my sister commented. “I wouldn’t be able to beat her, to say the least.”

“I know when I’m out of my depths─as long as the opponent isn’t evil.”

“I see.”

In other words, if the opponent was evil, she couldn’t tell anymore and charged in whether she was dealing with a monster or at her worst condition.

“Not that we’re sure,” Karen went on, her head moving just a little as she glanced somewhat disgustedly in the direction of Kagenui’s exit, “that she isn’t evil.”

Rejoice.

A few of the more overenthusiastic fans might be disappointed, but the vast majority of people, I’m sure, will consider it a positive development.

Hanekawa touched on it during our conversation─but Hitagi Senjogahara.

Yes, the happy news I have to share is that the woman known for catchphrases like “Roll over and play dead, doggy” or even “Roll over dead and play, doggy”─the second coming of Tiger Jeet Singh, the fierce tiger─was reborn.

From a naughty girl into a good girl.

How could I not feel happy even if it makes me a happy fool?

The events leading up to it were as follows:

She had been emotionally traumatized.

Put that way it might sound trite, but it was pressing for her.

Nothing is more pressing in this world than the trite stuff.

Trying hard can be a sin, for which you are punished.

A crab.

She met─encountered a crab.

Met with and robbed, she lost it.

Those two years would have been more than enough to close her heart. Let alone a couple of years, one day─might have done it.

Rejecting anyone who approached her.

Viewing generosity as aggression.

Opening her heart to no one.

Allowing no one into her heart.

Withdrawn.

Distrustful.

Aloof.

As a sort of joke behind her back, she was dubbed the cloistered princess─but for those who knew the truth, that nickname sounded terribly ironic.

But so what?

Even with the aberration resolved, even liberated from the crab.

Though released from turmoil and parted from her troubles.

While she opened her heart and let people in…

That didn’t mean─her broken heart had been mended.

Her manners and person, covered all over in bristles like a cactus, touchy from head to toe, couldn’t easily return to normal─or rather, it was her new normal.

The touchiness was now her.

Scales might fall from one’s eyes, but the ones coating Senjogahara didn’t.

Even after she began dating me, and even after she reconciled with Kanbaru, her personality didn’t experience any essential or fundamental transformation.

Deishu Kaiki.

A colleague, so to speak, of Oshino─and a competitor.

A conman.

Senjogahara’s reunion with him played a big part.

In fact, it’s the only cause, really.

All there is to it.

It wasn’t good fortune, nor was it a miracle. According to Hitagi Senjogahara’s own words, thanks to her reunion, her rematch, with Deishu Kaiki, she─settled it.

She must’ve expelled all the poison in her on that occasion.

A detox.

It probably isn’t necessary for me to say this, but just in case, I want to state in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t thanks to Kaiki─he doesn’t deserve a single ounce of gratitude.

He didn’t do a damn thing.

To borrow a phrase from Oshino, Senjogahara got saved all on her own. Not thanks to Kaiki.

And thus, in that manner, she became sweet and affectionate─totally the dere in tsundere, so to speak.

Karen this morning didn’t hold a candle to her.

If I told you that it affected her ability to tutor me for college exams, and that Hanekawa and I, after serious deliberation, dismissed her before the holidays (hence Senjogahara was currently away visiting her father’s family), maybe you’d get a picture of just how fawning she became.

But you’d be picturing it wrong, or should I say, insufficiently.

Calling me for no reason (before, she even blocked me some days), sending texts with emoji (she used to forward spam to me), and giving me cute pet names (instead of making do with belittlement) was just the beginning.

She no longer tore off flowers.

She no longer squashed insects.

She didn’t initiate conversations by bitching.

She reserved stationery for its intended uses.

This wasn’t limited to stationery, so using a potato peeler to julienne off my skin if I said anything remotely negative about her cooking was a thing of the past, too.

Even her expressionless iron mask was gone, her once monotone and mechanical speech featured a certain amount of intonation, and, more than anything, she laughed often. Laughed pleasantly.

It was such a drastic shift in personality that I wondered if someone had taken her place while I wasn’t looking.

It wasn’t a polite front, either.

Not a cloistered princess, not a shy kitty, but a normal, cute high-school girl acting her age.

Back in junior high, she’d been a track-and-field ace, respected and popular, and thinking that maybe this was what she’d been like, and that Hanekawa and Kanbaru had gotten to spend their middle-school years near such a beautiful presence, I sulked, You cheaters, I am so, so disappointed in you, but according to them─

“This goes beyond the way she was then.”

I don’t know, I’m not sure “tsundere” described it anymore.

Tsunderrhage, maybe?

The genre was niche to begin with, so why was Senjogahara striving to break new ground?

……

If that was it, though, she was taking the joke too far.

Even for a nasty prank.

After all─as part of her sickly sweet offensive, Senjogahara had cut her straight black hair, which she’d grown out for ages.

She made a decision and an appointment and went to a hair salon. She paid the appropriate price─and came out of it with short hair.

She’d even gotten rid of her straight bangs, replacing them with an exaggerated shag that looked like a saw.

Tsubasa Hanekawa, Suruga Kanbaru, and now Hitagi Senjogahara─not one of the Naoetsu High straight-bangs sisterhood remained.

That was just sad. Not being able to call Senjogahara “the last line of defense” anymore fills me with regret.

Since Kanbaru was growing her hair out (by the way, hers now hung down in two bunches, i.e. low pigtails, a tantalizing contrast with her boyish speech), Senjogahara’s hair was even shorter than Kanbaru’s.

She, too, broke with the past that way. She’d always been overly serious but was taking it easier since then, relaxing her draconian measures against herself.

Normal.

For people who had led their kinds of lives, whether for a long or brief while, those two syllables were in no way business as usual.

Because it was too lofty an ambition─to say they yearned for it didn’t come close.

That’s why.

A clean break of a haircut, not setting but resetting.

It had occurred to me before that despite her grownup visuals, her hairstyle was pretty Lolita, and it was in fact a holdover from her Lolita days.

She didn’t mess with it throughout middle school and practically forgot to in high school.

For her, it meant more than a style update or wanting to try something different, but a turning point.

Neither forgetting it, nor carrying it as a burden, but accepting it was what made it the past.

In that sense, Hitagi Senjogahara didn’t change or turn a new leaf, didn’t revert or redeem─let alone become oversweet.

She overcame a complex.

She managed to grow up, that’s what we ought to say.

………

That goes for Hanekawa, too. Being asked to maintain such an extreme personality indefinitely is nothing if not a nightmare. Being flexible and growing as they did is necessary.

It’s not like they can’t die or age.

In practice, unless you’re Deishu Kaiki─no one would say that Senjogahara’s growth made her a boring woman.

Speaking of which, Hanekawa once noted that Senjogahara seemed prettier and more evanescent than she was in middle school─but recently expanded on that by adding, “This Senjogahara is the best so far.”

Yup.

I knew this day would come.

I’d wished for the day.

Congratulations, Hitagi Senjogahara.

Congratulations to me, too.

Even putting aside my personal relief that I was no longer in mortal danger, when I took in all this, I was simply glad, as someone close to Senjogahara, and I also felt inspired to truly live.

Not that I was dead, or anything.

That’s too serious a matter to say enough small talk, but let’s put it aside for now and get back to the story at hand.

Afterwards, I (still riding on her shoulders) safely dropped Karen off at Kanbaru’s house and introduced both parties at the gate.

After much fretting, I’d given up and decided to go the honest route.

You just don’t tell lies that aren’t gonna hold up. No point in upselling.

I didn’t want them demanding a cooling-off period because I’d omitted important details.

I had a strict no-returns policy in place.

“Aww.”

“Aww.”

………

I wasn’t complimenting them!

Out of concern not for Karen’s chastity but for Kanbaru’s good name.

“What do you think you’re doing to Kanbaru-sensei?!”

Exploding in a fury the way I might if someone slandered Hanekawa, Karen slammed me with her knee before I could even land.

Talk about a burst of speed.

I did not stick my landing.

“What do you think you’re doing to my senior Araragi?!”

Uh, so my flying drop kick had done absolutely zero damage… What had I been kneed for?

Hmm. Some weird love triangle was forming here.

Or should I say a three-way standoff?

How about an unlovely triangle?

Mayoi Hachikuji made her appearance.

About halfway between my house and Kanbaru’s─on a street corner a little past the mailbox where Kagenui had asked me for directions.

I spotted a fifth grader with pigtails and a knapsack. Hachikuji.

Enter Mayoi Hachikuji.

She had yet to notice me in turn.

“……”

Now, now… I’m sure you’re all expecting me to make a big scene and run up and tackle her. A little girl standing there obliviously like a fawn that knows not the meaning of danger─I bet you think I’m going to hug her from behind and rub my cheeks all over her face, or something.

Please.

Fine. I admit that there was a time when I would have.

It’s true.

As a person, I was still a work in progress back then. I hadn’t grown up yet. They’re episodes from a bygone era when I was a boy, and emotionally immature.

As much as I’d like to summon and unspool some of those memories now, um, I honestly don’t remember much of it.

Does that make me small?

If you dredge up stories about when I was a brat every time I see your face, I might start to avoid you. Who wouldn’t be baffled if, say, your first crush was your teacher in kindergarten, and people brought it up after you’ve become an adult?

I’m an adult now, okay? Those days are over.

No one stays the same forever.

That time in my life was fun while it lasted, but everyone has to graduate from kindergarten at some point.

Yeah, that happened, didn’t it?

That’s what living means.

Sad or not, it can’t be helped.

Because there’s no life without growth, is there?

Hitagi Senjogahara grew up.

Tsubasa Hanekawa grew up.

Now I had to as well. Didn’t I just say so?

Complexes are meant to be overcome.

Lolicon included.

Yes, our interests and tastes keep changing, shifting.

No child plays with transformer robots or Barbie dolls forever.

Moving on is almost a duty.

In the first place, who gets excited over grade schoolers with pigtails in this day and age?

Pigtails? Grade schoolers?

A bit dated, no? May I say, out of touch?

I, for one, have lost all interest in this girl Mayoi Hachikuji. Sure, depending on your perspective, long ago there might have been a time when I really liked her. Even if there had been, in the grand scheme of things, that past is so long gone as to be B.C. It’s passé, as the French would say.

That’s right, I’m moé for Sima Qian.

Yup.

Well…

Well, well.

Well, well, well, well, that said, precisely because I had lost interest in Hachikuji, maybe there was no reason to ignore her now.

I didn’t care enough about her to ignore her.

You could say ignoring someone was a backhanded compliment.

Given the case.

Given the case, all right?

Maybe the sensible thing to do was to call out to her casually, to offer clear proof that Hachikuji meant nothing to me, the way you might attend a class reunion just to demonstrate that you weren’t hung up on whatever.

Nostalgia.

Who hasn’t thumbed through a photo album? Perused old memories?

People talk about learning from the past. Sometimes that’s how you take a new step in life.

It’s not like always looking ahead lets you see the future.

There. I couldn’t argue with a conclusion like that. Why resist or have any misgivings? If I didn’t get home soon and start studying, Hanekawa would scold me, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t spare a minute for Hachikuji.

“Now then.”

No more preliminaries. It was time for the drama to begin.

As if to make up for the time I spent on those preliminaries, I sped forth like the howling wind.

I couldn’t break the light-speed barrier, but I could have broken through a speedway barrier.

Okay!

I’ll grab her tight!

I’ll rub my cheeks all over her!

Touch and fondle her!

Love her to my heart’s content!

Just as I was about to bury my talons into her, my feet tripped on something, and I splattered against the asphalt like a rotten apple against a grater.

Zlik zlik zlik.

The amazing sound came from my skin.

Or more like my flesh.

“A-Ack?! Mister Araragi?!”

Turning around at the noise, Hachikuji yelped in surprise.

And she’d noticed me…

Now I wasn’t going to get to grab her. Or rub my cheeks on her.

Touch or fondle her.

Love her, or embrace her.

Oh, the despair… That my great fortune, running into Hachikuji, should end so ignominiously!

They say to seize opportunity by the forelock, and the expression seemed meant for the situation.

Opportunity was so high fashion.

Crushed more by my disappointment than the pain of having my skin scraped off, I was unable to get up for a while.

My clothes were in tatters to match my body and soul, but I couldn’t care less.

It was my heartache that consumed me.

It hurt.

Oh, I felt so alone it hurt.

Then I noticed something else.

It was my ankle.

A small hand was gripping my ankle firmly, sock and all.

I caught just the briefest glimpse, but the small hand, so pale it didn’t look Japanese, immediately sank into the ground─no, not into the ground.

It sank into shadow.

My shadow.

My shade.

“Hey, Shinobu! You did that?!”

I’d begun to think that I was pasted onto the ground and might never get up again, that the Creeping Chaos was none other than me, but buoyed by anger, I sprang to my feet and madly stamped on my own shadow like I was dancing the Twist.

Not that it would do any damage to Shinobu, but I had to vent somehow.

I couldn’t snap out of bizarre antics that any bystander would have found completely mystifying and unhinged. Meanwhile, there was no reaction from my shadow─I looked like a total lunatic.

Urk.

She was going to play dumb.

“U-Umm,” a voice called from behind me, “Mister Kikirara?”

It was Hachikuji.

How rare, she was addressing my back instead of the other way around─obviously, she didn’t try to hug me. If anything, she seemed to be keeping her distance.

As I spoke, I turned around. Cutting short my impotent Twist.

“Besides, when I fell down just now and surprised you, you said it perfectly fine.”

“Sorry, a slip of the tongue.”

“No, it was on purpose.”

“Smile of the month. Tee-hee!”

“That’s so adorable!”

What was this? She’d switched up her usual routine.

While I stood there unable to respond to my unexpected cue─

“Hah. Mister Araragi, you’re still so bad at improvising.”

She turned on her heel and began to walk away.

W-Wait!

She couldn’t flash a smile like that and just leave me!

Dammit, lately she was setting the bar way too high for our exchanges.

What kind of guy did she want me to be?

It probably took someone of Hanekawa’s caliber to come up with a proper reaction to that on the spot.

Hachikuji could try to leave, but she had the gait of a grade schooler. I caught up with her right away.

Karen also cut her ponytail off this morning on the spur of the moment, and that reminds me, at the beginning of August, Tsukihi also changed her hairstyle─though in her case she always is so I didn’t make much of it.

Well, I’ll come back to Tsukihi’s image change later.

In this regard, too, Mayoi Hachikuji was a precious character.

Although…that lack of change─that stasis─was far from a good thing for her.

In fact, it was sort of tragic.

Always the same, down the road.

Incapable of alteration or transformation, eternally unchanging.

A snail.

A snail, spiraling like a vortex.

“Excuse me?”

“Come on, it’s perfectly normal. A high-school boy giving a grade-school acquaintance of his a fun ride on his shoulders.”

“It’d only be fun for you…” grimaced Hachikuji.

My attempt to support and console had fallen flat. I don’t think even the sentiment got across to her. If anything, she resented it.

“Ahaha. How annoying.”

Hachikuji laughed merrily at me.

Well, at least I made her laugh.

I guess she didn’t need any support or consolation from me regarding her circumstances. It was none of my business and maybe only puzzling for her.

“Anyway, Mister Charabuki….”

“Ugh, Hachikuji. Please don’t mispronounce my name like I’m a veggie ingredient simmered in soy sauce for true connoisseurs. It’s Araragi.”

“Sorry, smile of the month. Tee-hee!”

“You skipped a step!”

Why was I getting the abridged version?

Yet when she smiled like that, it was hard not to let it slide.

“You’re very strict on yourself…”

Not that she was lenient with me.

“Anyway, Mister Araragi, you seem pretty fancy-free today, strolling around town in the middle of the day. Did you give up on studying for your exams?”

“Fancy-free strolling…”

“That’s defamation!”

“If this were a twelve-step plan, she wouldn’t be taken in by your act forever. Let me guess, did she catch on to how you were gazing at her in her camisole in the name of entrance exams? Half your motivation has to do with her breasts, anyway.”

“What do you take me for?!”

“The other half owes to my bodacious body, if I do say so myself.”

She was developing nicely enough for an elementary schoolgirl, but only for an elementary schoolgirl.

Also.

Hanekawa still wore her uniform even outside of school, despite her image change.

Let alone a camisole, her everyday clothes remained an enigma. Really, what did she wear?

……

I don’t know. Did she own any? Her home situation was complicated, but the neglect couldn’t be that severe…

Hmm. A bit of mysterious darkness?

“Um, Mister Araragi, I’d like to talk to you about serious stuff for a moment,” Hachikuji said with a serious, stuffy look.

I smelled a setup. These expressions of intent had never once led to a serious conversation.

“Again with the anime!”

“They won’t be able to reuse those cells.”

“Why is reusing them the premise?! Don’t make it so low-budget!”

“Good grief. The only part they’ll be able to recycle now is my transformation scene.”

Yeah, like there’d be any.

“Well, true,” I admitted, “anime characters’ clothes and hair and stuff do stay the same. Sometimes you even see them going to bed with their hair up.”

“That’s partly for the studio’s convenience, but apparently it’s also for the viewers’ sake.”

“Oh?”

“When the design changes, you honestly can’t tell who’s who anymore.”

“……”

But to the uninitiated, all of the Gundam designs supposedly look the same. Or all the girls tend to look the same─you hear that a lot.

“Nope. No second or third season. First time’s the charm, and that’s it.”

It was icky to plan so far ahead.

And “turn” the channel? That was some musty diction.

Did she have a rotary phone at home, or what?

“It’s going to be difficult to reproduce that in the anime.”

“Yep.”

“To begin with, though, do you think it’s okay to broadcast a character like her?”

“Uhh…”

I couldn’t reply straightaway.

“Fine, then what about this,” Hachikuji suggested. “In the anime version, I could play the heroine for you.”

“Ambitious, much?”

“Why not? Time to forget that woman who’s the heroine in name only.”

“Don’t be so harsh to somehow who just turned over a new leaf!”

“You sound like Kaiki!!”

“Tee-hee. I’d wear a camisole, you know? I totally would.”

“Is there any demand out there for you in a camisole?”

“Maybe a bra top?”

“Bra top… Putting aside the demand issue, wearing something so provocative in my presence would not end well for you.”

“I’d strip if it’s necessary!”

What a dangerous grade schooler.

I’m begging you, show a little moderation before the sponsors start to pull out.

“Et tu, Brute? Right in my flat chest!”

“Sorry, Hachikuji, I can’t bring myself to laugh at that. Remember, you’re a girl. Stay away from smutty jokes.”

“Did you tune out at the mere of mention of my flat chest?!”

People get me wrong on this. My preference is actually for busty, bodacious bodies.

“I only spare time for you,” I explained, “because you have large breasts for your age. It’s just that I have high expectations for their future, as nearly nonexistent as they may be today.”

“Did a human being just say that?”

“My precious first time getting proposed to isn’t something you, Mister Araragi, ought to snatch away from me.”

In fact, it’s best if you didn’t propose to anyone still in grade school, chided Hachikuji, shaking her head.

Urk.

She wasn’t giving me the time of day.

“Uh oh,” she muttered, “I’m getting a bad feeling.”

“Stay vigilant, Hachikuji. I’ve been casing your breasts for ages, waiting for the slightest opportunity to touch.”

“Assume that every male in this country is after your nearly nonexistent breasts.”

“I can’t ever step outside…”

Actually, that country is doomed, Hachikuji noted.

My favorability rating probably was, our country’s fate aside.

Were there at least some percentage points left? Where did I stand if we took a poll?

“Yeah…”

It was the quiet Sengoku who might pose the greatest issue.

You just didn’t visit a shrine in your school bathing suit.

What kind of centerfold photo shoot was that?

“Only Hanekawa will survive,” I predicted.

“But in her case, her upbringing is way too out there in being so dark and gloomy.”

“Yeah…more like pitch-black.”

Did this story only feature dark pasts, black hearts, and murky libidos?

“As far as Hanekawa goes,” I remarked, “there’s also the cat problem.”

“Ahh, Miss Toyama Black.”

Not only did it sound completely different, Toyama Black was no household name. Unless you were from Toyama Prefecture or a ramen aficionado, you could only scratch your head at the farfetched reference.

“Ah, speaking of which,” Hachikuji said, “I saw the design for the anime version of your character the other day.”

“What?”

“Huh…”

I wasn’t sure how to respond.

I hadn’t seen it.

Made me handsome…

“You know,” she went on, “not like Sengoku back in the day, but your hair was hiding your left eye. Kind of a nihilistic vibe.”

An acerbic wiseass. You’d never know it now.

I feel like I abandoned that side of my personality pretty early on. I guess once I started hanging out with Hachikuji.

An elementary-school temptress.

“Your nickname is going to be Kitaro without a doubt,” she declared.

“Without a doubt…”

……

Would she be the human heroine Yumeko?

Are we sure about that?

“It really does suit you almost like it was custom tailored,” Hachikuji remarked. “I mean that tiger-print geezer house vest of yours.”

“I’m not wearing one!”

What kind of teenager would that make me?

“Mister Araragi, you need to be more faithful to the concept. Don’t be so obstinate.”

“The real me has to adapt my design to some anime?!”

“It’s known as the law of ‘When the Adaptation Begins, the Original Suffers.’”

“What a scary law!”

“Way too scary!”

“Hey, Koyomi!”

“You sound just like him!”

In print, though, you couldn’t even tell it was an impression. She was just being overfriendly for all you knew.

“It’s impossible,” she observed, “to do a bad impression of his Eyeball father.”

“True… Anyway, I like Kitaro and all, but I’m not sure how I feel about it being my nickname.”

“Anyway, putting aside whether they made my character handsome, the height, what about the height? What did they do with my height?”

“Mm. They stayed faithful to the original.”

“Nkk…”

Okay.

Okay, then.

Sigh.

Maybe I should spend the rest of my days riding around on Karen’s shoulders.

When it came to overcoming complexes, aberrations were one thing, but I didn’t see how I’d ever get over how I felt about my height.

I could just stop caring so much, I know.

“Now I’m more worried that you have such a say in how the anime turns out.”

Was she the producer or what?

Hachikuji Pro?

“Well, my only real concern,” she confessed, “is what kind of dance we’ll be doing for the ending theme.”

“You really are fixated on that.”

“How avant-garde…” Traditional yet funky moves. But we’d probably made enough meta-comments. We were trying some people’s patience at this point.

“Ahaha! It’s written into my character. I’m allowed to get meta.”

“Yes, you’re right. I dropped a foreshadowing bomb on a whim, but I have no idea where to take it from there.”

“Like a newspaper serialization in its last gasps…”

“Well, I tried negotiating with the director of programming,” she shared. “No good ever comes of dragging out the original on account of the anime. No good, plus it’s just unnecessary. There’s always room for an anime even if you’re finished with the original.”

“You make it sound like you’re ordering dessert.”

“So you let them gang up on Hachikuji Pro.”

“Go big or go home. The only option left is to put out another sequel…from a different publisher.”

“From a different publisher?!”

“You see, the original suffered.”

“No, it didn’t! It did not!”

“Why black it out?! That only gives off an air of impropriety!”

“How about from Fujimi Fantasia Paperbacks?”

“For the love of God, do censor it, actually!”

“By the way, Mister Dusteragi…”

“Sorry, a slip of the tongue.”

“No, it was on purpose…”

“A slip of the teeth. Chomp!”

“That better be a love bite?!”

Yes! I managed to keep up with the adlibbing!

I wasn’t the type to be outwitted at every turn!

You’ve grown, Koyomi Araragi!

“Huh? Rolls Royce… You mean the car?”

“Yes. Um, judging from your reaction, you’ve never heard it?”

“Nope. Well, not that I’m aware of.”

“Ahh. I’m not surprised. I bet the only urban legend you do know is the one about the axe-man.”

Urban legends. Whispers on the street. Secondhand gossip.

Sure, I was nowhere as knowledgeable of such things as Oshino.

“Don’t put on a front, Mister Araragi. Trying to act smart will only embarrass you later. Quoting game theory like a know-it-all when you’ve only heard of the Prisoner’s Dilemma is just painful.”

“I know the Rational Pigs, too!”

It was only because Hanekawa talked about it once, though. I’d already forgotten the details. All I remembered was getting flustered at the prim Miss Hanekawa going, “Pig… Pig… Big pig… Little pig… Pig eats… Pig wants to eat… Pig wants to eat and presses lever.”

What an unfortunate memory I had.

“Wow, that’s amazing.”

“Doesn’t know? After delivering a friggin’ Rolls Royce by air? Or did some other company send the new car?”

“So cool!”

Wow.

The customer support for fancy companies was on a different level!

“No, Mister Araragi. It’s just an urban legend.”

“No reason. I thought it’d make for good small talk.”

“You… Don’t introduce random bits just so you can mispronounce my name.” Maybe a rival company like Rolls Royce was on the mind of a Harley Davidson like her.

“Well, if you don’t care for small talk, then how about a riddle, Mister Doalagi.”

“It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. You’re Mister Doalagi.”

“You sound so sure!” Another curveball! It broke so hard I was ducking!

“Huh. They do?”

“Don’t go around thinking you own your name just because it’s your name. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people are saying that it’s Doalagi, so don’t be obtuse and insist that it’s Araragi.”

“Uh, umm…”

When she put it that way, I started doubting myself.

“You’re very popular in Nagoya,” Hachikuji assured me.

“Like a hometown idol…”

“If I mispronounced it as Ayaragi, you’d be very popular in Yamaguchi Prefecture.”

“That minor place name at least sounds more similar, but Hachikuji, what about the riddle? If you aren’t just out to mangle my name, then get on with it already.”

“Hm? Oh, uh…”

“Ah, there’s a good one.” Pam, she struck her palm with her fist. “Hmm, you might know this one already. It appeared in Die Hard 3.”

“Die Hard 3. Yeah, I’ve seen it so I probably do. The villain poses all sorts of mean riddles to the cop who’s the hero, right?”

“……”

Hold on, was that in the movie? Honestly, I hadn’t experienced that masterpiece since it was on TV when I was in middle school, so I didn’t remember very well, either.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Hachikuji apologized. “This riddle only appears in the novelization.”

The riddle itself was the blind spot! Most people in Japan didn’t even know that the first two Die Hard movies were based on novels!

“Oh, but this might spoil it for people,” Hachikuji cautioned. “Anyone who doesn’t want to know the answer should skip ahead a few pages.”

“Don’t be so impatient. Try thinking for yourself a little.”

“The truth is, I’m not good at riddles. I’m not very witty.”

“I wouldn’t say that…but okay, in that case, time’s up. The answer is that the dog can walk halfway into the forest.”

“Huh. Why?”

“A-ha!”

It was a pretty neat answer. You could even say witty.

I let myself feel impressed. Yes, old movies had a thing or two to teach us, this was how culture got carried down from one generation to the next─

“Right, it was pretty interesting and all, Hachikuji, but why bring it up now?”

“How could that riddle possibly turn out to be foreshadowing?”

“Sort of…” Framing it as a life lesson was so phony, though. She was starting to sound like a conman I knew. “But that doesn’t apply to immortal beings, like vampires.”

“Right. There’s no beginning or end for immortals.”

And they obviously don’t break down, tied in Hachikuji.

“Still,” Hachikuji said, “if I don’t mix in a little nonsense, everything would be foreshadowing, and that could spoil the second half.”

“What an icky kind of foresight…”

“Well, Mister Araragi, why am I the only one with anything to say? It’s your turn now. Initiate some interesting small talk, please.”

“Geez, get off my back. I’m out of fun trivia.”

“I tried that with my sister this morning and bombed.”

“Ah, say no more.” Hachikuji’s grumpy expression turned smug. “Since you’ll be getting more attention thanks to the anime, you’re distancing yourself from all the anarchic banter. Basically, you’re selling out.”

“What a nasty way to put it!”

“What did I say to deserve all that?!”

Hmm, knowledge─so important. Maybe I should have discussed root numbers.

“But Hachikuji, trying to be clever can backfire. You don’t want to get too convoluted in your approach.”

Hachikuji suddenly straightened up. She looked serious, the smile disappearing from her face. With a vulnerable, lonely, and yet fulfilled air, she nodded.

“Mister Araragi. I came here today to say goodbye.”

“You’re gonna make me cry!”

That line, alone, almost made me bawl reflexively like a little mallet testing my nerves!

“My tear ducts! They’re going to burst!”

“The truth is, I was supposed to go back to my town a long time ago. I was so worried about you that I ended up staying this long… But it’s fine now. You’ll be fine on your own, now.”

“No! You mean it was all for me?!”

“You might as well kill me!!”

I was past tearing up and sobbing my heart out now.

Yeah, forget it!

That bit of foreshadowing could remain a loose end!

Or else, even if there were a million of me, I’d die a million sobbing deaths.

“Hey, Hachikuji, now that it’s come to this, why don’t you just live in my shadow with Shinobu? That way, you’ll never get lost again.”

“Living face to face with her sounds pretty nerve-wracking…”

Then─

And then.

Like eight trumpets announcing the end of comic relief, another voice inserted itself, as if it had found an opening.

“Hello, kind monster sir. Do you know how to get where I’m going? Tell me if you do─he said with a dashing look.”

“There’s supposed to be an Eikow Cram School that shut down… You don’t happen to know where it is, do you, kind monster sir?─he said with a dashing look.”

“……”

And despite the choice of pronoun, the child was dressed in an orange drawstring blouse paired with a cute tiered skirt.

A girl who used the male pronoun!

So they really existed!

I’d thought it was an anime invention!

Next to me Hachikuji muttered, “Seeing you dance on your heels at the sight of a little girl makes it hard to put much stock in your assertion that you’re not a loli-lover…”

Be quiet!

Hmm? Huh?

Did Hachikuji know this girl? No, that didn’t make sense.

“My name is Yotsugi Ononoki,” the kid went on to introduce herself.

Doing so without being asked was another thing she shared in common with Kagenui.

Maybe they were together after all─in fact, didn’t the lady mention something about a little girl in parting?

That was an odd name…and pretty stalwart sounding. Ono meant axe, and as with the axe-man that had just come up─it had a ferocious or virile ring to it.

On the other hand, Hachikuji might mispronounce my name that way.

Ononoki, huh?

“─he said with a dashing look.”

“……”

What an obnoxious verbal tic.

It was way too long for rounding out a sentence.

It made for a pretty lackluster performance.

“I see. I’m Koyomi Araragi.”

“Nice to meet you, kind monster sir─he said with a dashing look.”

“Uh, same here.”

She didn’t get it, did she?

And why was she referring to me like I was a character from some children’s show?

I was pretty sure “monster” wasn’t one of my nicknames.

Unless Ononoki had witnessed my failed attempt to sexually harass Hachikuji as per my usual custom?

“Let’s see, Eikow Cram School…”

I’d explained how to get there just a while ago, so I barely needed to think.

Too bad. If I didn’t remember, I could call Hanekawa again.

Their first names sounded similar. Maybe she and Kagenui were sisters on vacation somewhere nearby, and they got separated and were meeting up at an abandoned building?

That seemed pretty improbable.

Kagenui, herself, had said something about setting up base.

In any case.

It wasn’t my place to pry.

I just needed to answer her question.

Besides.

Although her blank face made it difficult to tell if she was really in trouble, she wasn’t standing on a mailbox or anything, and I had no reason to think twice about helping her.

I could dismiss her weird verbal tic as just a juvenile attempt to stand out.

In fact, I didn’t even need to ascertain if she and Kagenui were really together.

Coming to deeply regret not finding out their relationship while I had the chance─didn’t seem like a possibility.

“Hmm, I see. You saved me, thank you, kind monster sir. You too, li’l miss snail─he said with a dashing look.”

She somehow didn’t strike me as disagreeable, though.

She wasn’t a stranger to feelings, but rather, to means of conveying them─that was the vibe.

In that sense, the kid really did resemble the old Senjogahara. In Senjogahara’s case, the traits had been acquired, but I got the feeling that Ononoki’s personality was innate.

To tell the truth.

A chunk of iron imbued with personhood.

Or maybe even a blade that was a person─a little girl.

Wait.

“Huh?” A question floated into my mind only now that Ononoki was gone. “Hachikuji… Didn’t she refer to you as ‘li’l miss snail’?”

“Well, I do find it unforgivable… But that’s not what I meant.”

Hmm. It was weird, wasn’t it?

Something about bees or hornets.

“Monster? Fiendish?”

A fiend.

Monstrous bloodsucker─vampire.

I couldn’t help but glance down at the shadow the summer sun cast─as usual, as ever, there was no response.

“Mister Araragi, as far as I could tell, though, that girl looked really competent. My master might be an even match.”

I’d actually already eaten at Kanbaru’s─I meant to head straight home after dropping Karen off, but before I could leave, Kanbaru’s grandmother propositioned me.

To stay for lunch, I mean.

Which is how I wound up being invited to partake.

While I ate, I couldn’t help wondering when Kanbaru’s grandmother had grown to trust me so much. Maybe she just couldn’t neglect a strange older boy who came over twice a month to clean up her granddaughter’s room…

Putting that aside.

I imagined she was worried about Kanbaru’s left arm─about her granddaughter.

If Grandma Kanbaru felt beholden to me somehow on that score…I’m afraid her gratitude was misplaced. Like Senjogahara, Kanbaru─got saved all on her own. There was nothing I could do, or did do, in the matter.

So let’s just assume that she’d invited me to lunch simply to be welcoming.

“……”

Shinobu Oshino.

A vampire who had lived for five hundred years─the aberration who had died for as long.

Ironblooded, hotblooded, yet coldblooded.

She was my former master─and my current servant.

Koyomi Araragi became a vampire from being attacked by Shinobu Oshino, and Shinobu Oshino ceased to be a vampire for attacking Koyomi Araragi. Much transpired, and much was lost. Indeed, all was lost. There wasn’t a lot more to say about it.

Shinobu was also free to enter and leave my shadow as she pleased.

She had no problem ignoring me when I wanted a reaction out of her, but now that I was trying to study, lo and behold, she dares to show up.

“Hmph…”

Hm? Where was my pencil?

Ah, right, Karen had made me break my five-sided pencil. I’d just have to use a mechanical one for now. I could buy a new lucky charm for myself another day.

“Are ye deaf, ye clotpole?!”

“I give, I give, I give! Let go, let go, let go! We can talk this outch!”

Shouting the famous line from the May 15 Incident (I had all the studying to thank for that, but having messed up a word, I didn’t get full points), I desperately tapped Shinobu’s elbow. Ah, of course, I realized, this morning Shinobu must have watched from my shadow while Karen “draped herself over” me.

Talk about dumb.

An awful example, but ease of understanding is the priority here.

“I think I’d be Illana,” Shinobu said, finally recovering. For a former aristocratic vampire, she was oddly steeped in Japanese culture.

Oshino’s elite tutoring had produced dramatic results in a very short period of time, but a slight imbalance was observable due to the forced cultivation.

“Oh yeah, you’re a night person.”

That was a funny concept to apply to a vampire, but they hated the sun and loved the moon. It was ingrained behavior, a survival instinct that she couldn’t help but maintain even after ceasing to be a vampire.

Just the way humans fear fire.

“Aye, I am a night person.”

“……”

Shinobu, where is your vampire pride?

Says the guy who took it away from her.

“But what about now?” I asked her. “It’s broad daylight. Heck, this is probably the time of day when the sun is strongest.”

“Okay…” I don’t know, lately Shinobu seemed to be turning into a sad-sack cartoon vampire. Before long she’d be drinking tomato juice instead of blood.

“I obviously have a fair reason for dragging myself awake at this hour.”

“Hmph. As someone in the same category, I could not look the other way. Maybe while I sleep, but I was awake.”

The same category.

Was that the Lolita category?

“Can’t it wait until later?” I requested. “Until after I get a little studying done?”

“’Tis a thorny matter. It importunes fast action.”

“What… Fine, tell me.”

I wasn’t even pouncing on an excuse to slack off… I was actually beginning to enjoy studying (Hanekawa’s doing).

But I guess Shinobu was my weak point.

My biggest complex, you might say.

Though it was in my shadow, we were basically together around the clock. We had to get along going forward, so it was important to meet each other half way.

“According to intelligence I have become privy to through channels most secret, Mister Donut is holding a hundred-yen sale this very moment.”

“……”

Hey. Her secret channel was clearly just the ad that came with the paper. I’d seen it too.

“My lord and master, pray let us depart immediately before they sell out.”

“Calm down, those kind of stores don’t sell out so easily…”

I couldn’t believe she was interfering with my studies for this. Shinobu’s love for Mister was a tradition that stemmed from her days in the abandoned building with Oshino, but she was graduating from passive waiting and getting proactive about it.

She sure had gotten lowbrow, fast. At least seek blood instead of donuts.

She’d become picky about food.

“The talk in certain quarters,” she informed me, “is that there are new specials. We must make forth on this.”

She’d even obstructed my rendezvous with Hachikuji.

That was her fair reason? Then my best guess as to why there’d been no reaction from my shadow after Ononoki left was that the former vampire had simply been dozing off.

“Fine, fine, I get it,” I said. “I’ll go buy you some before dinner. It’ll be a nice break for me. You like the golden chocolate flavor, right?”

“Nay.”

Shinobu shook her head emphatically, obstinately.

Hmm?

But that wasn’t why Shinobu had shaken her head. She had a terrible request to make of me.

“Ye can take me to the store. I wish to see them with my own eyes and choose for myself.”

“……”

“It’s pretty bright outside,” I warned. “Are you sure you can handle it?”

“Perhaps my eyes sting a little. But I am hardly a proper vampire now─not even sunscreen, but a simple bonnet, should be more than adequate.”

“Huh…”

Parley my ass, baby girl. She just wanted to be spoiled.

Like I said, I knew Mister Donut was hosting a hundred-yen sale─I’d seen the same ad that Shinobu had. I actually meant to pick some up soon.

Just as she’d imitated the sleeper hold, she must have figured I was an easy mark. The fool, she must have thought, he is in a happy dream and his guard is down just because his sister was affectionate to him.

Shinobu was a crafty one.

Hrmm.

But Shinobu stood out, so I didn’t like to take her outside. On top of her blondness and foreignness drawing attention, she was as pretty as a doll. In a way it was worse than chatting with Hachikuji.

That authority was unimaginably coercive. I’d experimented in a variety of ways, but at present, it seemed that Shinobu Oshino was well and truly subservient to Koyomi Araragi.

So if I answered her with a flat-out no, Shinobu had no choice but to back down. My potent authority, however, meant that I shouldn’t wield it casually, and I couldn’t brush away her requests. In a way, power that was too powerful was vulnerable. Strength could be weakness.

“Hah, you’re taking her hostage?! My beloved Hachikuji?! You scoundrel!” Well, actually, she wasn’t taking her hostage but into protective custody. “But you forget… I usually run into Hachikuji during the day. Do you think you can stay up forever? Two or three days maybe, but always?”

“Besides, you’re underestimating me. I’m not the kind of guy to bow to threats.”

“Fine, then I have another notion for thee. With my unstinting aid, thou could have thy way with the little maidling.”

“Urk. That’s a pretty attractive offer.”

“Keheheh. ’Tis a sweet thought, is it not? Abetted by my special power, thou could fulfill thy erotic urges with all the maids of the land, her included.”

“Nrk… You’re tempting me.”

Dammit… I was kind of all over the place at the time, but why hadn’t I noticed over spring break when she was her adult version and in grownup mode?!

I would never stop lamenting that bitter past, that grave misstep.

Energy drain and not much else, wasn’t it?

In a broad sense, that was just her version of eating.

I wasn’t going to let her snack on Hachikuji, my forever-preserved rations.

“Let us see…” Shinobu knitted her brow.

“I could conceal myself in thy shadow…and peep up her skirt from the ground to spy out the color of her underwear,” she suggested feebly, and it was indeed a shabby plan.

“Aye, call it underpants transparency!”

“Using administrative lingo doesn’t make it any more persuasive, okay?” I sighed. “Enough already, I get it. The stars just have it out for me today. I’ll take you to Mister Donut.”

She’d ignored me earlier─but Yotsugi Ononoki. And Yozuru Kagenui. I wanted to ask her about them.

Even if she’d been half-asleep, if those two were somebody, then Shinobu would have sensed something.

As an aberration among aberrations, the king of aberrations─the aberration slayer that she was.

“Geez, tell me how you really feel, why don’t you? Anyway, I’ll signal for you once I’m outside the store. I’m gonna go by bike so you can stay in my shadow until we get there. You probably don’t want to be out in the sun any longer than you have to, right?”

“Aye, the sun is my enemy.”

“Your enemy.”

“One day I shall vanquish it.”

“……”

“It should only take me about half an hour to get there, so try and stay up that long.”

“Fret not. While I wait, I shall play my Nintendo DS in thy shadow.”

“……”

She had a Nintendo DS in there? I didn’t realize my shadow came equipped with a four-dimensional pocket. Think of all the extra storage space.

“So how do you have a DS in there?”

“I have the ability to create matter, so a game device is simple enough. For my model, I used the one ye borrowed from the maiden with the forelocks like Yo Nihiruda.”

“How do you even know the leader in that program?”

Sengoku, she meant.

So you had one all along, I thought.

It did bother me how it looked strangely new and sparkling, as if it had been bought just the day before. In any case, I used it to study for a little while afterward.

Cute, wasn’t it? That’s where she begged me to take her. She was still just a kid, I guess.

Oh yeah, she also asked me to be her acting coach for the class play they were putting on for her school talent show. I’d have to do that for her over summer vacation, too.

……

All I did was borrow a DS from one of my sister’s friends, but from a distance, did I look like I was in danger?

With that, Shinobu dove into my shadow.

Honestly, if she could make a gaming device, couldn’t she make herself Mister Donut snacks as well?

I guess it just didn’t work that way. Self-sufficiency might be the cornerstone of life, but sometimes food only tasted good because someone else prepared it for you.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel abused, but since I wasn’t being subjected to domestic violence from Senjogahara anymore, all things considered, I hadn’t met much misfortune lately. If I didn’t strike a balance like this, I’d be a no-goodnik who spent all his time harassing gargantuan little sisters and lost little girls.

I got out of my seat, changed from my around-the-house clothes back into my outside clothes, grabbed the key to my bicycle lock, left my room, and went down the stairs─and bumped into Tsukihi walking down the hallway.

Hrmph. Bad timing. I was hoping to sneak out without her seeing me.

She’d just bathed.

If you thought, That’s par for the course for the Fire Sisters, however, you lose… The other half of the duo, Karen, is as horrendous a cook as you might expect (her cleaning skills are okay).

Anyway, Tsukihi must have headed for the shower after doing the dishes.

Talk about relaxed.

This wasn’t Hanekawa─Tsukihi with her hair all wet and slick left me cold.

“Ah, Koyomi. Are you heading out again?”

“Yup, again.”

“God has other plans for me today.”

Well, not God but a certain demon.

Uh huh, Tsukihi nodded as if she didn’t quite understand.

Hmph, she looked so laidback and carefree as she stood inclining her head.

Her droopy eyes, slack expression, sloping shoulders, and hunched posture reminded me of a certain lazy-panda mascot.

She was a non-lazy panda. In other words, she was a bear.

Tsukihi didn’t have Karen’s fighting skills and was the Fire Sisters’ strategist, but her hysterical, moody aggressiveness was almost freakish, even if I shouldn’t say that about my own sibling.

My honest-to-goodness view was that Karen, the hotheaded type of moron, was at least manageable, while Tsukihi, a twisted and devious sort of stupid, was beyond me.

If Karen was a red flame, Tsukihi was a blue flame. If you drew too close, you might get burned, and it wouldn’t just be your skin.

I’d have to discuss it with Hanekawa next time.

An even more extensive therapy course might be necessary.

“Koyomi, do you think Karen will be late coming home today?”

“Maybe. Dunno.”

Hey, maybe she was becoming a woman tonight─or at least, a young lady. In which case, I washed my hands of the whole thing.

I didn’t know and I didn’t care.

“Huh, I see,” Tsukihi said. “When Karen gets worked up about something, she loses sight of everything else.”

“Like you’re one to talk,” I quipped.

She had no self-awareness. That was what made her so scary. The fact that puffing her cheeks out made her even more like a lazy panda was also scary.

“What,” I asked, “did you need something from Karen? I thought you were done for now with your Fire Sisters defenders of justice make-believe, including the follow-up.”

“Hm?”

Was she? As far as I could tell, they were together around the clock like always. Joined at the hip. Fellow pilgrims.

“Are you two fighting? Have things been awkward?”

“Nah, not at all, not at all,” my sister replied. “I’ve no better friend, or Ribbon.”

“Ciao?”

“Chu Chu!”

The secret language of siblings.

A total communication breakdown.

“Still, I guess I’m starting to think we can’t go around calling ourselves the Fire Sisters forever.”

“When you think about it, you used to be BFFs with me and Karen, too. We even called you Homie Koyomi, remember?”

“Never once.”

We did all play together, though, with Sengoku in the mix, for example.

We might not have been on best terms as siblings, but we weren’t born with bad blood between us─I guess we’d started to grow apart around the time I began middle school?

I wasn’t the best older brother, and Karen and Tsukihi were fairly unorthodox little sisters, so maybe I shouldn’t generalize about brothers and sisters.

I glanced down at my own shadow as I spoke─it was vague and indistinct since we were in the hallway and the lights were off. Although Karen wasn’t going to start staying up all night and sleeping all day, I thought about the vampire playing with a Nintendo DS in there.

“Yeah. And once we hit our late teens, the police will probably stop overlooking stuff.”

“……”

She appeared to lack even a moment’s compunction over using her gender and age as a weapon.

Scary girl.

Working tirelessly for the sake of others without expecting anything in return─if that qualified as justice, then in Karen’s case, justice was her goal.

However, in Tsukihi’s case─justice was her hobby.

Something to do.

It was harder to brand as juvenile─because plenty of adults out there were like that, too.

Both versions of justice reeked of fakeness, but their natures were actually diametrically opposed.

Though they accommodated each other well, Karen believed that the end justified the means, while Tsukihi believed that the means justified the end.

If Karen was a masochist─then Tsukihi was a sadist.

If Tsukihi was true south─then Karen was true north.

They weren’t identical like twins.

They were compatible only when all their bumps and sockets fit together.

Red flame, blue flame.

“Okay…” Another surprising remark. That was pretty clear to me, but Tsukihi’s self-awareness left me totally flabbergasted.

“I love justice, I think it’s great and all, but I don’t think there’s any firm core of justice in me. Karen’s always saying that the justice coursing through her veins won’t allow it or that the spirit of justice flares up in her.”

“But I’ve never felt like that. There’s justice in Karen, but not in me. The justice that I believe in─is Karen’s justice, and yours.”

“Mine?” Huh, what was that supposed to mean?

“……”

It was so contrary to the stuff she usually spouted. If this was what she thought about when she was alone, that really was surprising to me.

Whenever the Fire Sisters disagreed, Karen’s opinion took precedence─I’d always assumed that was because Karen was older, but I guess there’d been another reason.

“Yeah, now that you mention it…”

Karen had pretty much acted alone. I’d seen it as yet another one of her trademark rampages, but now that Tsukihi said so─maybe it was a clear and present indication of coming change.

A sign that Karen Araragi─was graduating from the Fire Sisters.

When I began middle school, my attitude toward my sisters changed. When Karen entered middle school, however, for better or for worse, her attitude toward Tsukihi remained the same.

That probably owed to Karen’s clear-cut and simple personality─but even she couldn’t stay a kid forever.

She couldn’t.

Please tell me she couldn’t!

Ahem… I just want that to be true so bad that I got carried away─but anyway.

Once Karen entered high school, her world would expand again. Sure, she might change─and in an entirely different manner from how I became a loser in high school.

She might end up changing. Growing.

“You’re making me sound bad. I see myself as your dependable big brother, always taking care of you guys.”

“Taking care. What, you mean by brushing our teeth while you grab our tits?”

“Ahahaha,” the dependable big brother tried to laugh that scene away.

“All right, I’ve decided.” Tsukihi balled her hand into a tight fist as if to indicate some inner resolve. “When Karen comes home today, I’ll have a talk with her. A serious conversation about the future of the Fire Sisters.”

“Really? You mean you might split up?”

I was partly (okay, totally) teasing her when I mentioned splitting, but as she spoke, Tsukihi pointed her finger at me as if I’d hit the nail on the head.

She looked like an idiot.

You’d think she was smarter from the way she’d been talking.

“Koyomi, you have to come to the wrap-up party! There’ll be lots of middle-school girls!”

“If you insist. I’ll free up enough time and show my face, at least,” I answered indifferently.

Well, regardless of her resolve, I doubted my little sisters would actually be having that discussion tonight. Tsukihi was going to be sidetracked by a most infuriating surprise: the loss of Karen’s precious ponytail.

That awl was going to be wielded against me once more, that was guaranteed.

Ah, I almost forgot. Having brought up Karen’s ponytail, I need to tell you about Tsukihi’s hairstyle.

This morning I was so busy trying to dodge an awl that I lacked the peace of mind to go into any detail, but she, too, had changed her hair at the start of August.

If I could stop being her brother for a moment and give an objective appraisal, the cut made her look somewhat grown up in contrast to what she was really like on the inside.

Now that was where I put my foot down.

Not that any of this really matters. I just thought you might like to know.

Less like Kitaro, and more like Misery from Outer Zone.

Okay, that was an exaggeration.

“Well, dependable big brother? Weren’t you headed out somewhere?”

“Ah, that’s right.”

“Well then, mind the fort,” I said. “I should be back soon. I’ll head to the store while I’m out, too. Do you need anything?”

“I’m fine. Have funs.”

“Funs I will have. Now hurry up and get back to your room. I can’t open the front door while you’re standing half-naked in the hallway.”

“I’m telling you not to walk around in such a loose getup. No being provocative unprovoked.”

Japanese clothing was all fine and dandy, but she had to do it right. What an amateur. Her obi was wrapped around her waist in slapdash fashion, so her tits and legs were practically on display… She had the body of a kid, so it wasn’t even sexy.

If anything, the sight was a turn-off.

“Tsukihi.”

“Yeah?”

“Prepare to be undressed,” I announced, reaching for the knot on her obi.

“Wha? What? Koyomi, stop, what are you doing?! Aieee!!”

Tsukihi tried to resist me, but it was the other sister who was the fighter. My littler little sister’s resistance meant little to me. Believe it or not, I had seen my fair share of battle.

If it was Karen, that would be one thing, but if it was my mom and dad, then more than finished, it would be the end.

The series would end with this paragraph.

The worst possible conclusion… We’d really regret that the story had continued.

And thus.

“Hmm? Just as I thought,” I said.

“What, what, what? What just happened? What’s going on? Can someone please tell me why my brother just stripped me, tied me up, and shoved me down?”

“Well, Tsukihi. Didn’t you use to have a scar right around here?”

I pointed at a spot near her chest.

I caught a brief glimpse through the opening of her flimsy yukata and thought that something seemed off─and I was right.

The scar that should have been there─was gone.

The scar.

Back when Tsukihi was in elementary school, she got herself wrapped up in trouble for reasons that weren’t entirely clear─and as the result of that trouble, she jumped off the roof of the school building and got that scar.

Hm?

“Wait, wait,” I said. “Actually, you don’t have any scars on your body at all.”

Now that I looked closer, it wasn’t just the wounds from then. As a Fire Sister and defender of justice who lacked the impressive fighting skills of her partner, Tsukihi was constantly acquiring new scrapes and bruises.

Not a trace of them, her skin was smooth and clean.

Faintly rosy from bathing─supple, lustrous, like a drop of water would just bounce off.

“Wounds heal, you know. I’m a human being.”

“Hrm? Yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

It made sense. It did.

Part of the metabolic process? Hrrm…

“Um, would you mind getting off me now, Koyomi? Taking my clothes off is one thing, but if all you wanted to do was check for scars, I don’t see why you had to tie my hands up or straddle me.”

I’d gotten carried away.

In the course of one day, I’d straddled both of my sisters. What kind of brother was I?

Hmph. Well, I guess this was a good thing. Better less scars than more scars. She was a girl, after all, and “battle scars” only sounded cool.

“Why did you grab my breast before getting off?!”

“No reason, really.”

Why not, as long as it was there?

On a whim, to put it succinctly.

“It caught my eye so I just wondered what it felt like.”

“That casually?!” cried Tsukihi.

“Yeah. Here. Puyo-puyo. Puyo-puyo.”

“Fire!”

“Don’t make a chain!”

“Ice Storm! Diacute! Brain Dumbed! Jugem! Bayoe-n!”

“Zonked!”

No garbage puyo fell on my side─though I felt like there might be a disastrous number of nuisance puyo in the queue (hard puyo, at that).

Honestly, as a fan since Story of Sorcery, I wanted to get off a real seven-hit chain at least once, while I lived.

“I’d seem like a very, very incredible character if someone heard that out of context…”

There wouldn’t be a speck of favorability to him, and words like “fiendish” and “monster” would be too tame.

That guy was an evil rakshasa.

“We’ll use that on the in-store displays!” recommended Tsukihi.

“What bookstore would want to put that up?”

“Don’t go stirring up trouble.”

Talk about interference with business.

“Cripes…” Grumbling, Tsukihi stood up from the floor and hurriedly put on the yukata that I’d removed. “If you keep doing stuff like this, Karen and I are gonna have to squeal on you to Miss Hanekawa.”

“No, not that.”

I could only imagine how angry she’d get.

“Quit your complaining. Chances are Karen is going through something similar at this very moment.”

A deep, or as they put it, a Teens’ Love relationship─courtesy of the wicked clutches of my junior. When you thought about it that way, maybe the Fire Sisters did share a connection on some unseen level.

“Ah, let’s see. Was your boyfriend’s name Rosokuzawa? You still haven’t broken up with him?”

“Hmph.”

That got on my nerves.

As their older brother, the mere fact that they had boyfriends was unforgivable. Dating while they were still in middle school? It made me resentful.

I wish they’d break up.

Of course, for my own part, if Senjogahara ever found out how I behaved with my sisters, she might hit me with her own set of divorce papers.

In that regard, it was still probably too early to introduce Senjogahara, reborn or not, as my girlfriend. I was already in enough trouble on account of my sisters using the Tsubasa Hanekawa card. When it came to this stuff, Hanekawa wasn’t exactly on my side.

“Anyway, I’m really going this time,” I declared.

“Don’t come back! You’re not welcome in this house anymore!”

And so, after our spontaneous exchange in sibling-speak, I waited until Tsukihi ascended to the second floor and finally opened the front door and stepped outside.

Naturally, I had no way of knowing.

No way of knowing, at that point in time─that I would never place my hands on that front door again.

“Of course not.”

You know what? Not a shred of her character from the beginning of the series remained. Or from the middle.

Wasn’t she ditching her traits a little too soon?

If she was going to change so much, she could quit talking like a geezer while she was at it.

Even when they actually existed, aberrations ultimately lacked substance, so the surrounding environment influenced them in an undiluted fashion─Black Hanekawa was a perfect example.

Between her first appearance and her second, the monster cat’s character had changed significantly─as a direct reflection of the changes in Hanekawa’s heart and mind.

I could only conclude, then, that much of the responsibility for Shinobu turning into such an idiot fell on my doorstep…

I see. Was that the impression I gave, objectively speaking (for instance, to Hachikuji or Hanekawa)?

For reals?

And so.

I, Koyomi Araragi, granted the wish of a Lolita and former vampire, Shinobu Oshino, by escorting her to Mister Donut.

Which I suppose is why it wasn’t a very large Mister Donut (they didn’t offer the meat buns, broth noodles, or other dim sum that the larger stores carried), but Shinobu’s eyes still sparkled with delight as if she were in a wonderland out of one of her finest dreams.

Even her blond hair seemed to glitter with an extra shine. Kind of like a Super Saiyan.

I don’t think I had ever seen the little girl version of Shinobu show such unalloyed excitement over anything. That said, I could hardly get worked up with her.

“Nrrr,” she growled, “I cannot have them all? No, I suppose not─I gave it an assay but knew it wouldn’t bode even as I said it. Worry not, I too have learned the customs of the human world. I shan’t overshoot, the opportunity to eat at Mister Donut, alone, contents me. Verily then, what would ye say to one of each flavor?”